Brian patten poet biography template

There are many good poets about the place, there are even some excellent poets and a few truly great poets around, but there is a small select band whose words have become part of all of everyday lives, they transcend their creator and become part of our tradition. An example of this being Stevie Smith’s poem Waving Not Drowning, a phrase that is part of our shared language, people use it without realising where it comes from. Another example is today’s guest, Brian Patten, whose poem So Many Different Lengths of Time has become part of our oral tradition, it is a poem we turn to to express those feelings of grief that we cannot articulate. It speaks for us at a time when grief has silenced us. I have to confess I read it at my brother-in-laws funeral. It has left its author and is there for all.

So many Different Lengths of Time was written as a response to a poem by Pablo Neruda, the first verse is a translation of Neruda's lines. Brian then goes on to answer in the rest of the poem.

What can I tell you about Brian Patten? A list of achievements, a potted biography? I am happy to do so; Brian has the Freedom of the City of Liverpool, where he was born. The anthology The Mersey Sound which featured Brian along with Adrian Henri and Roger McGough has sold well over 500,000 copies, a phenomenal amount for a poetry book. His first collection was Little Johnny's Confessions (1967); he won a special award from the Mystery Writers of America Guild for his children’s novel Mr Moon’s Last Case (well worth a read).  He has read alongside Pablo Neruda, Stevie Smith, Alan Ginsberg and Robert Lowell. He has written comic verse for children Gargling With Jelly and Thawing Frozen Frogs are wonderful for people of any age. His collection Armada, which includes Some Many Different Lengths of Time has been by my bedside since I bought a copy off Brian in the late 90’s at a rea

Brian Patten made his name in the 1960s as one of the Liverpool Poets, alongside Adrian Henri and Roger McGough. Their joint collection, The Mersey Sound (1967), has been credited as one of the most significant anthologies of the twentieth century for its success in bringing poetry to new audiences, and is now a Penguin Modern Classic.

His books have since been translated into many European language. An accomplished performer, he has performed his work in venues as varied as The Islamic Students Union in Khartoum and the Royal Festival Hall on London’s South Bank, and over the years he has read alongside such poets as Pablo Neruda, Allen Ginsberg, Stevie Smith, Laurie Lee and Robert Lowell.

Although - especially in performance - Patten’s style contains much humour, his work is generally lyrical and his subjects are primarily love and relationships. HisCollected Love Poems draws together his best work in this area.  Charles Causley once commented that the collection "reveals a sensibility profoundly aware of the ever-present possibility of the magical and the miraculous, as well as of the granite-hard realities. These are undiluted poems, beautifully calculated, informed - even in their darkest moments - with courage and hope." [ poetryarchive.org ]

Brian Patten was born in 1946 in Liverpool, and grew up in a working class neighbourhood, now long demolished. He left school at fifteen, becoming a junior reporter on The Bootle Times, while writing the occasional music column for the local music paper, The Mersey Beat. One of his first pieces included a report about McGough and Henri. At sixteen he edited and produced the magazine underdog, which gave a platform to the underground poets in Liverpool at that time. Many of the iconic poems in Penguin Modern Classics ground breaking anthology,  The Mersey Sound first appeared in the magazine

Nationality: British. Born: Liverpool, Lancashire, 7 February 1946. Education: Sefton Park Secondary School, Liverpool. Career: Reporter, Bootle Times, and editor, Underdog, both Liverpool. Regents Lecturer, University of California, San Diego, 1985. Awards: Eric Gregory award, 1967; Arts Council grant, 1969; Mystery Writers of America special award, 1976; Writers award, Arts Council of England, 1998. Agent: Rogers Coleridge and White, 20 Powis Mews, London W11 1JN, England.

Publications

Poetry

Portraits. Privately printed, 1962.

The Mersey Sound: Penguin Modern Poets 10, with Adrian Henri and Roger McGough. London, Penguin, 1967; revised edition, 1974,1983.

Little Johnny's Confession. London, Allen and Unwin, 1967; New York, Hill and Wang, 1968.

Atomic Adam. London, Fulham Gallery, 1967.

Notes to the Hurrying Man: Poems Winter '66-Summer '68. London, Allen and Unwin, and New York, Hill and Wang, 1969.

The Homecoming. London, Turret, 1969.

The Irrelevant Song. Frensham, Surrey, Sceptre Press, 1970.

Little Johnny's Foolish Invention (bilingual edition), translated by Robert Sanesi. Milan, M'Arte, 1970.

Walking Out: The Early Poems of Brian Patten. Leicester, Transican, 1970.

At Four O'Clock in the Morning. Frensham, Surrey, Sceptre Press, 1971.

The Irrelevant Song and Other Poems. London, Allen and Unwin, 1971; revised edition, 1975.

When You Wake Tomorrow. London, Turret, 1971.

And Sometimes It Happens. London, Steam Press, 1972.

The Eminent Professors and the Nature of Poetry as Enacted Out by Members of the Poetry Seminar One Rainy Evening. London, Poem-of-the-Month Club, 1972.

Double Image, with Michael Baldwin and John Fairfax. London, Longman, 1972.

The Unreliable Nightingale. London, Rota, 1973.

Vanishing Trick. London, Allen and Unwin, 1976.

Grave Gossip. London, Allen and Unwin, 1979.

Love Poems. London, Allen and Unwin, 1981.

New Volume, with Adrian Henri and R

Brian Patten poet from United Kingdom was born on February 7, 1946 has 79 years. Poems were written in Modern age mainly in English language. Dominant movement is modernism, realism.

Biography

Born near Liverpool's docks, he attended Sefton Park School in the Smithdown Road area of Liverpool, where he was noted for his essays and greatly encouraged in his work by Harry Sutcliffe his form teacher. He left school at fifteen and began work for The Bootle Times writing a column on popular music. One of his first articles was on Roger McGough and Adrian Henri, two pop-oriented Liverpool Poets who later joined Patten in a best-selling poetry anthology called The Mersey Sound, drawing popular attention to his own contemporary collections Little Johnny's Confession (1967) and Notes to the Hurrying Man (1969). Patten received early encouragement from Philip Larkin.

The collections Storm Damage (1988) and Armada (1996) are more varied, the latter featuring a sequence of poems concerning the death of his mother and memories of his childhood. Armada is perhaps Patten's most mature and formal book, dispensing with much of the playfulness of former work. He has also written comic verse for children, notably Gargling With Jelly and Thawing Frozen Frogs.

Patten's style is generally lyrical and his subjects are primarily love and relationships. His 1981 collection Love Poems draws together his best work in this area from the previous sixteen years. Tribune has described Patten as "the master poet of his genre, taking on the intricacies of love and beauty with a totally new approach, new for him and for contemporary poetry." Charles Causley once commented that he "reveals a sensibility profoundly aware of the ever-present possibility of the magical and the miraculous, as well as of the granite-hard realities. These are undiluted poems, beautifully calculated, informed - even in their darkest moments - with courage and hope."

Patten writes extensively for ch