George Barker (poet)
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- See George Barker for other notable people with the same name.
George Granville Barker (13 February 1913 – 27 October 1991) was an English poet and author.
Barker was born in Loughton, near the Epping Forest in Essex, England, and was raised by his mother in Chelsea, London. He was educated at an L.C.C. school and at Regent Street Polytechnic. He left school at the age of 14 and pursued several odd jobs before settling on a career in writing. Early volumes of note by Barker include Thirty Preliminary Poems (1933), Poems (1935) and Calamiterror (1937), which was inspired by the Spanish Civil War.
In his early twenties, Barker had already been published by T. S. Eliot at Faber and Faber, who also helped him to gain appointment as Professor of English Literature in 1939 at Tohoku University (Sendai, Miyagi, Japan). He left there in 1940 due to the hostilities, but wrote Pacific Sonnets during his tenure. He first traveled to the United States where he began his longtime liaison with writer Elizabeth Smart, returning to England in 1943.
Barker's novel The Dead Seagull, published in 1950, described his affair with Smart, whose 1945 novel By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept was also about the affair.
Barker's Collected poems (ISBN 0571139728) were edited by Robert Fraser and published in 1987 by Faber and Faber.
In describing the difficulties in writing his biography Barker was quoted as saying: I've stirred the facts around too much, ... It simply can't be done.
References
- Essay by Robert Fraser, Open University (http://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=258)
- Short informal biography with links to some of Barker's poems (http://oldpoetry.com/author/George%20Barker)
- More links to Barker's poems (http://www.artofeurope.com/barker/)