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

• Profile at Carcanet Press
• Profile at Poetry Archive

References

1. "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. 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