Charles Causley (August 24 1917 - November 4 2003) Cornish poet and writer. His work is noted for its simplicity and directness, for its concerns with Christianity, and for its associations with his native Cornwall.

Biography

Causley was born in Launceston in Cornwall and was educated there and in Peterborough. In the Second World War he served in the Navy, an experience he later wrote about in a book of short stories, Hands to Dance. In the 1950s he began publishing his poetry, some of which continued the sea-faring theme. In the post-war years he trained as a teacher and worked at a school in Launceston. He was also employed by the BBC. He spent the remainder of his life in Cornwall, a county he became intimately asscociated with. As well as poetry and plays and short stories he also wrote opera librettos. In 1958 Causley was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and was awarded a CBE in 1986. Other awards include the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry in 1967 and a Cholmondeley Award in 1971. He was presented with the Heywood Hill Literary Prize in 2000. Between 1962 and 1966 he was a member of the Poetry Panel of the Arts Council of Great Britain.

In 1982, on his 65th birthday, a book of poems was published in his honour that included contributions from Ted Hughes, Seamus Heaney, Philip Larkin and twenty three other poets, testifying to the respect that the British poetry community had for him. Despite this, his work is rarely considered as part of a movement or group and his influence on his contemporaries would seem to be small. Many considered him, like John Betjeman to be a man working outside of the dominant trends of the poetry of his day. Because of this, academia has paid less attention to his work than it might. His popularity, particularly among the Cornish, remains relatively high.

Publications

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Poems

• Farewell, Aggie Weston (1951)
• Survivor's Leave (1953)
• Union Street: Poems (1957)
• Johnny Alleluia: Poems (1961)
• Underneath the Water (1968)
• Secret Destinations (1984)
• A Field of Vision (1988)

For children

• Figgie Hobbin: Poems for Children (1970)
• Jack the Treacle Eater (1987),
• The Young Man of Cury and Other Poems (1991).

External links

11 Poems