Richard Kell (poet)

Richard Alexander Kell, poet, the second of a Methodist missionary's four offspring, is the widowed father of two sons and two daughters. He was born in Youghal, Co. Cork, Ireland, in 1927. After early years in India he was educated mainly in Belfast and Dublin, where he graduated from Trinity College. He taught in England, finally as a senior lecturer in English and American literature. He contributed critical essays and poetry reviews to various periodicals (including The Guardian), and after retirement co-edited Other Poetry.

Kell began writing poetry at the age of ten, and at eighteen achieved newspaper publication with his now widely known poem 'Pigeons'. Since then his work has appeared in magazines, anthologies, and sixteen solo collections large and small (see bibliography).

Until 1995 Kell also wrote a small amount of music. He had public performances by vocal and instrumental soloists and ensembles, and (including a few broadcasts) by six orchestras, among them the BBC Concert Orchestra, Northern Sinfonia, and – while he was temporarily using the pseudonym Alec Richard – the Liverpool Philharmonic.

Bibliography

• Fantasy Poets 35 (Eynsham, Oxfordshire, 1957)
• Control Tower (London, Chatto & Windus, 1962)
• Differences (Chatto & Windus, 1969)
• Humours (Sunderland, Ceolfrith Press, 1978)
• Heartwood (Newcastle upon Tyne, Northern House, 1978)
• The Broken Circle (Ceolfrith Press, 1981)
• In Praise of Warmth, new and selected poems (Dublin, Dedalus Press, 1987)
• Rock and Water (Dedalus Press, 1993)
• Collected Poems (Belfast, Lagan Press, 2001)
• Under the Rainbow (Lagan Press, 2003)
• Letters to Enid (Nottingham, Shoestring Press, 2004)
• Taking a Break (Shoestring Press, 2008)
• Hilarity and Wonder (Shoestring Press, 2011)
• Old Man Answering (Shoestring Press, 2014)
• Making Word Gifts (Shoestring Press, 2016)
• The Whispering Sky (Shoestring Press, 2020)