Frederick Turner

Turner died on 4 September 2025.

• Name — Frederick Turner • Born — 19 November 1943 • Birthplace — Northamptonshire, England • Occupation — Poet, critic, professor • Education — University of Oxford • Movement — New Formalism • Notable Works — The New World; Genesis; Apocalypse • Awards — Milán Füst Prize; Levinson Poetry Prize; PEN Dallas Golden Pen Award • Died — 4 September 2025 (aged 81) • Honorific Prefix — Professor

Born in Northamptonshire, England, Turner is the son of Scottish cultural anthropologist Victor Witter Turner and English anthropologist Edith Turner. His brothers include scientist Robert Turner and anthropologist Rory Turner.

In 1952, Turner's family moved to Northern Rhodesia when his father accepted an assignment to study the Eastern Ndembu people. Turner was home-schooled by his parents and read works including Rudyard Kipling, Robert Louis Stevenson, C.S. Lewis's Narnia, and Shakespeare. He also heard stories from the Ndembu oral tradition. The family returned to England in 1955 when Victor Turner accepted a position at the University of Manchester.

Turner attended Manchester Grammar School before studying at the University of Oxford from 1962 to 1967, where he obtained a B.A., M.A., and B.Litt. in English Language and Literature. His thesis supervisor was Helen Gardner. His thesis, Shakespeare and the Nature of Time, was later published as a book. After moving to the United States, he was naturalized as a U.S. citizen in 1977.

Turner worked as an assistant professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara from 1967 to 1972, then as an associate professor at Kenyon College from 1972 to 1985. Between 1979 and 1983, Turner and Ronald Sharp served as editors of The Kenyon Review. During this period, Turner collaborated with neuroscientist Ernst Pöppel on research into poetic meter and brain function. In 1985, they published The Neural Lyre: Poetic Meter, the Brain, and Time in Poetry magazine. Turner served as a visiting professor at the University of Exeter from 1985 to 1986, then as Founders Professor of Arts and Humanities at the University of Texas at Dallas from 1986 until his retirement in 2020.

Turner writes in metrical forms and longer narrative genres, including science fiction poetry.

Turner has published three epic poems: The New World (1985), set in 2376 A.D.; Genesis (1988), about the human colonization of Mars; and Apocalypse (2016), concerning climate change in 2067.

Turner co-translated a collection of poems by Miklós Radnóti, a Hungarian Jewish poet killed during the Holocaust, with Zsuzsanna Ozsváth in 1992. He has also translated Chinese poetry from the Tang dynasty.

Turner married Mei Lin Turner in 1966. They met as undergraduates at Oxford University. He has two sons.