Raymond Garlick
Raymond Garlick | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1926 |
| Died | 2011 Cardiff, U.K. |
| Occupation(s) | Poet and editor |
| Children | Molly Garlick |
Raymond Garlick (21 September 1926 – 19 March 2011) was an Anglo-Welsh poet, editor, critic, political campaigner and teacher.[1][2]
Biography
Raymond Garlick was born on 21 September 1926 at Harlesden in London, but as a child he spent holidays at his grandparents' house in Deganwy in Conwy County Borough; and he grew up in Llandudno. He left school at the age of fifteen. He went on to study English literature at Bangor University. While there, he learnt Welsh and became a Roman Catholic Christian, but later was no longer practising. By the 1940s he had met the painter, Brenda Chamberlain, and while still a student at Bangor he rented from her part of Ty'r Mynydd, the cottage she had shared with the artist, John Petts.
Between 1948 and 1960 he worked as a teacher at Bangor, Pembroke Dock and Blaenau Ffestiniog. In 1948 he married Elin Hughes. He and Elin adopted two children - Iestyn in 1952 and Angharad in 1958, but divorced in 1977.
After teaching at Bangor he moved to Pembroke Dock in April 1949 to take up a post teaching English at Pembroke Dock County School, under Roland Mathias. That year, at the age of twenty-three, he became a co-founder of the review, Dock Leaves (from 1958 re-named Anglo-Welsh Review) and from 1949 to 1960 was its first editor. In 1954 he moved to teach at Blaenau Ffestiniog, where John Cowper Powys was one of his neighbors.
In 1960 he left Britain, and began to teach at an international school at Eerde in the Netherlands. But in 1967 he returned to Britain, and eventually became a Principal Lecturer, in charge of the Welsh Studies course, at Trinity College, Carmarthen (now part of the University of Wales, Trinity Saint David). There with enthusiasm he introduced his students to the works of such writers as David Jones, Idris Davies, Glyn Jones, Alun Lewis, Dylan Thomas, R. S. Thomas, John Ormond and Leslie Norris. His own poetry was influenced by the writings of Roy Campbell, and of R. S. Thomas and John Cowper Powys. He continued lecturing at Trinity until he retired in 1987; and afterwards continued to live at Carmarthen.
In 1995, during Swansea's Year of Literature, a portrait of Garlick was made by the painter, Gordon Stuart.
He died on 19 March 2011 at Cardiff.
An extensive archive of his manuscripts is held at the National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth.
The poet Peter Finch, chief executive of Academi (the Welsh national literature promotion agency and society of writers), described Raymond Garlick as one of the five best mid-20th century English writers in Wales - along with R. S. Thomas, Leslie Norris, John Tripp and Harri Webb.[3]
Works
- Poems from the Mountain-House (1950)
- The Welsh-Speaking Sea (1954)
- Requiem for a Poet (1954)
- Blaenau Observed (1957)
- Landscapes and figures: Selected poems 1949-63 (1964)
- A Sense of Europe (1968)
- An Introduction to Anglo-Welsh Literature (1970)
- A Sense of Time: poems and antipoems 1969 - 1972 (1972)
- Incense (1976)
- Anglo-Welsh Poetry 1480-1980 (edited, with R. Mathias)
- Collected Poems 1946 - 86 (1987)
- Travel Notes (1992)
- The Delphic Voyage and Other Poems (2003)
Further reading
- D. Dale-Jones, Raymond Garlick (1996)
References
- ^ Raymond Garlick
- ^ News and Events at the University of Wales, Bangor
- ^ "Tributes paid to Anglo-Welsh poet Raymond Garlick". BBC News Online. 23 March 2011. Retrieved 23 March 2011.
External links
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