Christopher Middleton (poet)
Christopher Middleton (10 June 1926 – 29 November 2015)[1] was a British poet and translator, especially of German literature.
Life
He was born John Christopher Middleton in Truro, Cornwall, in 1926. Following four years' service in the Royal Air Force,[2] he studied at Merton College, Oxford, matriculating in 1948.[3] He then held academic positions at the University of Zürich and King's College London.[3] In 1966 he took up a position as Professor of Germanic Languages & Literature at the University of Texas, Austin, retiring in 1998.[4] Middleton has published translations of Robert Walser, Nietzsche, Hölderlin, Goethe, Gert Hofmann and many others. He has received various awards, including the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize and the Schlegel-Tieck Prize for translation.[5]
Middleton married Mary Freer in 1953; they had two daughters and a son.[3] They divorced in 1969.[1] Middleton died on 29 November 2015.[1][6]
Works
- Poems (1944)
- Nocturne in Eden (1945)
- The Vision of a Drowned Man (1949)
- Torse 3 (1962)
- Nonsequences (1965)
- Our Flowers & Nice Bones (1969)
- The Fossil Fish (1970)
- Briefcase History (1972)
- The Lonely Suppers of W. V. Balloon (1975)
- Pataxanadu and Other Prose (1977)
- Céleste, Orange Export Ltd., collection Chutes (1977)
- Bolshevism in Art and Other Expository Writings (1978) essays
- Carminalenia (1980)
- The Pursuit of the Kingfisher (Carcanet Press, 1983) essays
- 111 Poems (Carcanet Press, 1983)
- Serpentine (1984)
- Two Horse Wagon going by (Carcanet Press, 1986)
- Selected Writings (Carcanet Press, 1989)
- The Balcony Tree (Carcanet Press, 1992)
- On a Photograph of Chekhov (1995)
- Intimate Chronicles (Carcanet Press, 1996)
- The Swallow Diver (1997)
- Jackdaw Jiving (Carcanet Press, 1998)
- The Redbird Hexagon (1999)
- Faint Harps and Silver Voices: Selected Translations (Carcanet Press, 2000)
- Twenty Tropes for Doctor Dark (2000)
- The Word Pavilion and Selected Poems (Carcanet Press, 2001)
- The Anti-Basilisk (Carcanet Press, 2005)
- Collected Poems (Carcanet Press, 2008)
- Collected Later Poems (Carcanet Press, 2014)
Translations
- Selected Stories by Robert Walser (Carcanet Press, 1988)
- The Spectacle at the Tower by Gert Hofmann (Carcanet Press, 1988)
- Our Conquest by Gert Hofmann (Carcanet Press, 1988)
- The Parable of the Blind by Gert Hofmann (Fromm International, 1989)
External links
References
- 1 2 3 "Christopher Middleton, poet - obituary". telegraph.co.uk. The Daily Telegraph. 18 December 2015. Retrieved 19 December 2015.
- ↑ "Christopher Middleton". The Poetry Archive. Retrieved 17 February 2013.
- 1 2 3 Levens, R.G.C., ed. (1964). Merton College Register 1900-1964. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. p. 392.
- ↑ "Christopher Middleton". Poetry Foundation. Retrieved 15 February 2013.
- ↑ "The Schlegel-Tieck Prize for German Translation: Past Winners". The Society of Authors. Retrieved 15 February 2013.
- ↑ Christopher Middleton: Poet celebrated for his urgent and vivid verse and his translations, especially from German