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Christopher Middleton (poet)

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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)

References

  1. ^ a b c "Christopher Middleton, poet - obituary". telegraph.co.uk. The Daily Telegraph. 18 December 2015. Retrieved 19 December 2015.
  2. ^ "Christopher Middleton". The Poetry Archive. Retrieved 17 February 2013.
  3. ^ a b c Levens, R.G.C., ed. (1964). Merton College Register 1900-1964. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. p. 392.
  4. ^ "Christopher Middleton". Poetry Foundation. Retrieved 15 February 2013.
  5. ^ "The Schlegel-Tieck Prize for German Translation: Past Winners". The Society of Authors. Retrieved 15 February 2013.
  6. ^ Christopher Middleton: Poet celebrated for his urgent and vivid verse and his translations, especially from German