Tom Raworth

Raworth's first book, The Relation Ship (1966), won the Alice Hunt Bartlett Prize. Raworth attended the University of Essex from 1967–70, under the aegis of Donald Davie who ran its literature department. According to Raworth, he studied Spanish at the University of Essex, working toward a B.A. in Latin American Literature. But after the first year, he transferred to the Masters program and in 1970 was awarded an M.A. in the Theory and Practice of Literary Translation. In the 1970s, he worked in the United States and Mexico, first teaching in universities in Ohio, Chicago and Texas, and later living in San Francisco where he was involved with the Zephyrus Image press. After six years abroad he returned with his family to England in 1977 to take up the post of resident poet in King's College, Cambridge for a year. Raworth's early poetry was influenced by the Black Mountain and New York School poets, particularly Robert Creeley and John Ashbery, together with strands of European poetry (Apollinaire), Dada, and Surrealism. His 1974 book Ace showed that Raworth had moved to a more disjunctive style. This style was reflected in short, unpunctuated lines that lead the reader into following multiple syntactic possibilities, and where it is "increasingly impossible to keep track of the profusion of meanings on offer." Raworth's "poetic line" can knit together anything from observations of the everyday to self-reflexive commentary on the acts of thinking and writing, to lifts from pulp fiction and film noir, to political satire:Those looking for a sustained, linear narrative or argument are to be disappointed, but the themes interlock and repeat with an uncanny frequency that nonetheless gives the poem a grim feeling of progress – in the sense that tracing a finger along the side of a Möbius strip is progress. What followed was a series of long poems in this particular mode—after Ace came Writing (composed 1975–77; published 1982), Catacoustics (composed 1978–81; published 1991) and West Wind (composed 1982–83; published 1984). Subsequent projects extended this mode into a kaleidoscopic sequence of 14-line poems (not exactly "sonnets") that extended through "Sentenced to Death" (in Visible Shivers, 1987), Eternal Sections (1993) and Survival (1994). Later collections include Clean & Well Lit (1996), Meadow (1999), Caller and Other Pieces (2007), and Let Baby Fall (2008). Raworth's 550-page Collected Poems was published in 2003. Although a number of major poems still remained uncollected at the time, much of this work was subsequently published: beginning with Windmills in Flames (2010). Whatever didn’t make it into the latter publication, found its way into Structures from Motion and As When, both published in 2015. A book of Raworth's prose, Earn your Milk, was published in 2009. The latter included all of his uncollected prose, including "uncategorizable prose-work", long out-of-print: A Serial Biography (1969), which has been described as an "assembly of memoir and reportage." Several boxes of Raworth's notebooks, typescripts, and correspondence (ca. 1968–1977) are held at the University of Connecticut's Dodd Research Center.

Over the years, since his work began appearing in the 1960s, Raworth had more than 40 books of his own work published, including pamphlets of poetry, prose and translations. Raworth gave regular readings of his work throughout his life, across Europe, the U.S., and beyond. In time, he even gave readings in China and Mexico. He made a number of recordings and videos during the course of his career. Raworth's readings had their own "signature style," which was specifically noted for the speed of his delivery, something David Kaufmann has described as "breakneck speed." Kaufmann writes that when Raworth "gives live readings, he runs roughshod over the line breaks, thus making it impossible for the reader to rest with what she has just heard." Raworth was also interested in collaborative work. This was reflected in the many performance events and texts he created in collaboration with musicians such as Steve Lacy, Joëlle Léandre, Giancarlo Locatelli, Peter Brötzmann and Steve Nelson-Raney; other poets, including Jim Koller, Anselm Hollo, Gregory Corso, Dario Villa and Franco Beltrametti; and painters including Joe Brainard, Jim Dine, Giovanni D'Agostino and Micaëla Henich. In 1991, he was the first European writer in 30 years to be invited to teach at the University of Cape Town. In 2007, Raworth was awarded the Antonio Delfini prize for lifetime achievement, in Modena, Italy. Some of his other awards included the Cholmondeley Award, and the Philip Whalen Memorial Award. His visual art consists mainly of drawings, collage and found object art and was exhibited in Italy, France, South Africa, and the United States. As fellow poet Catherine Wagner has pointed out, Raworth was an "inventor of dozens of ingenious and provocative forms," and so was an important influence on a succession of poets that have followed him. At the time of his death, he was considered by many to be, arguably, the finest British poet of his generation.

Poetry • The Relation Ship. Goliard. 2nd ed., 1969: Cape Goliard. • 1968: The Big Green Day. Trigram. • 1970: Lion Lion. Trigram. • 1971: Moving. Cape Goliard. • 1973: Act. Trigram. • 1974: Ace. Goliard. 2nd ed., 1977: The Figures. 3rd ed., 2001: Edge Books. • 1976: Common Sense. Zephyrus Image. • 1976: Logbook. Poltroon. • 1976: The Mask. Poltroon. • 1979: Nicht Wahr, Rosie?: Miscellaneous Poems 1964–1969. Poltroon. • 1982: Writing. The Figures. • 1984: Tottering State: Selected and New Poems 1963–1983. The Figures. 2nd ed., 1988: Paladin. 3rd ed., 2000: O Books. • 1987: Visible Shivers. O Books/Trike. • 1991: Catacoustics. Street Editions. • 1993: Eternal Sections. Sun & Moon. • 1996: Clean & Well Lit: Selected Poems 1987–1995. Roof Books. • 1999: Meadow. Post-Apollo. • 2003: Collected Poems. Carcanet. • 2010: Windmills in Flames: Old & New Poems. Carcanet. • 2014: XIVLiners. Sancho Panza. • 2015: Structure from Motion. Edge Books. • 2015: As When: A Selection. Carcanet. Translations • 1971: Selections from Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, and Peru in The Penguin Book of Latin American Verse. Penguin Books. • 1986: Liliane Giraudon, What Day Is It. Women’s Studio Workshop. • 1993: Dario Villa, Between the Eyelashes. Active in Airtime. • 2017: Hans Arp and Vicente Huidobro, Save Your Eyes. Face Press (posthumous). Prose • 1967: A Serial Biography. Fulcrum. 2nd ed., 1977: Turtle Island. • 1971: Betrayal. Trigram. • 2009: Earn Your Milk: Collected Prose. Salt. • 2025: Cancer. Carcanet (posthumous).