Barker was born in
Loughton, near
Epping Forest in
Essex, England, to an English father George Barker (1879–1965), a temporary police constable and former batman in the
Coldstream Guards, who later worked as a butler at
Gray's Inn.[1][2] During
World War I, Barker senior had earned a field commission to the rank of Major. Barker's mother was Marion Frances (1881–1953), née Taaffe, came from
Mornington, County Meath. His parents moved to
Chelsea when Barker was six months old.[3][4][5][6] Barker's younger brother was the painter
Kit Barker; they were raised at
Battersea, London, and the family later lived at Upper Addison Gardens,
Holland Park.[7]
Barker was educated at an
L.C.C. school and at
Regent Street Polytechnic. Having left school at an early age, he pursued several odd jobs, before settling on a career in writing. Early volumes by Barker include Thirty Preliminary Poems (1933), Poems (1935) and Calamiterror (1937), which was inspired by the
Spanish Civil War,[8] and contains an attack
on the
Spanish Nationalists.[9]
In his early twenties, Barker had already been published by
T.S. Eliot at
Faber and Faber, who helped him to gain appointment as Professor of English Literature in 1939 at
Tohoku University (
Sendai, Miyagi,
Japan). He left there in 1940 due to the hostilities, but wrote Pacific Sonnets during his tenure.
He then travelled to the
United States, where he began his longtime liaison with writer
Elizabeth Smart, by whom he had four of his fifteen children.[10] Barker also had three children by his first wife, Jessica.[11] He returned to England in 1943. From the late 1960s until his death, he lived in
Itteringham,
Norfolk, with his wife, the writer and journalist
Elspeth Barker. In 1969, he published the poem At Thurgarton Church, the village of
Thurgarton being a few miles from Itteringham.
Barker's 1950 novel, The Dead Seagull, described his affair with Smart, whose 1945 novel By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept also focused on the affair.[12]Robert Fraser edited Barker's Collected Poems (
ISBN0-571-13972-8) that were published in 1987 by Faber and Faber. Barker was partly associated with the
New Apocalyptics movement,[13] which reacted against 1930s realism with surrealistic and mythical themes. However, his characteristically independent idiosyncrasies established him as an individual in his own right.[14]
Barker was an uneven writer.
C.H. Sisson considered Barker's masterpiece to be The True Confession of George Barker.[15]
In describing the difficulties in writing his biography, Barker was quoted as saying: "I've stirred the facts around too much ... It simply can't be done." However, Robert Fraser produced a biography, The Chameleon Poet: A Life of George Barker, in 2001.[16]
Bibliography
Thirty Preliminary Poems, David Archer (1933)
Alanna Autumnal, London : Wishart (1933)
Poems, Faber & Faber (1935)
Janus(The Documents of a Death.-The Bacchant.) [Two tales.], Faber & Faber (1935)
Calamiterror, Faber & Faber (1937)
Elegy on Spain, Manchester : Contemporary Bookshop (1939)
Lament and Triumph, Faber & Faber (1940)
Selected Poems, New York : Macmillan Co (1941)
Eros in Dogma, Faber & Faber (1944)
Love Poems, New York : Dial Press (1947)
News of the world, Faber (1950)
The Dead Seagull, Farrar, Straus & Young New York (1951)
A vision of beasts and gods, Faber (1954)
Collected Poems, 1930–1955. Faber & Faber (1957)
The view from a blind I, Faber (1962)
The True Confession of George Barker, MacGibbon & Kee (1965)
Dreams of a summer night, Faber & Faber (1966)
The golden chains, Faber (1968)
At Thurgarton Church, A poem with drawings, etc., London : Trigram Press (1969).
Runes and Rhymes, Tunes and Chimes, illustrated by
George Adamson, Faber & Faber (1969)
To Aylsham Fair, illustrated by
George Adamson, Faber & Faber (1970)
Essays, MacGibbon & Kee (1970)
Poems of places and people, Faber and Faber (1971)
III hallucination poems, New York City : Helikon Press (1972)
The alphabetical zoo, Illustrated by Krystyna Roland, Faber and Faber (1972)
Homage to George Barker on his sixtieth birthday, edited by John Heath-Stubbs and Martin Green, Martin Brian & O'Keeffe (1973)
Dialogues etc., Faber (1976)
Seven poems, Greville Press (1977)
Villa Stellar Faber and Faber (1978)
Anno Domini, Faber and Faber (1983)
The Jubjub Bird or some Remarks on the Prose Poem, Greville Press, (1985)
Collected Poems of George Barker, Faber and Faber, (1987)
Mir Poets Thirteen: Three Poems, Word Press (1988)
Seventeen, Greville Press, (1988)
Street ballads, Faber & Faber (1992)
Selected Poems, edited by Robert Fraser, Faber and Faber (1995)
Dibby Dubby Dhu and other poems, illustrated by Sara Fanelli, Faber (1997)
The Chameleon Poet: A Life of George Barker, Robert Fraser, Jonathan Cape Ltd (2002)
Poems by George Barker, selected by Elspeth Barker, Greville Press (2004)
References
^The Chameleon Poet: A Life of George Barker, Robert Fraser, Jonathan Cape, 2001
^Encyclopaedia of British Writers, From 1800 to the Present, second edition, 20th Century and Beyond, ed. George Stade et al, DWJ Books LLC, 2009, p. 35
^Rough Draft: The Modernist Diaries of Emily Holmes Coleman, 1929-1937, ed. Elizabeth Podnieks, University of Delaware Press, 2012, p. 252
^Sansom, Ian (2 March 2002).
"Master of the red Martini". The Guardian. Retrieved 8 July 2008. Jessica has just given birth to his twins, Elizabeth Smart is busy giving birth to her second child by him, and he is spending most of his time drinking in London.
^I Ousby ed., The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English (1995) p. 38
^I Ousby ed., The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English (1995) p. 38
^C. H. Sisson, English Poetry 1900-1950 (1981) p. 243
^C. H. Sisson, English Poetry 1900-1950 (1981) p. 248
^The Chameleon Poet: A Life of George Barker (Jonathan Cape Ltd, 2002,
ISBN978-0-7123-0540-2).
Further reading
Daniel Farson, Soho in the Fifties (Michael Joseph, London, 1987).
An Anthology from
X (Oxford University Press, 1988)
Patrick Swift 1927-83 (Gandon Editions, Kinsale, 1993).
Selected Poems, HOMAGE TO GEORGE BARKER (On his Sixtieth Birthday). John Heath-Stubbs & Martin Green, eds, 1973. Includes portrait of Barker by Swift seen here.
The Chameleon Poet: A Life of George Barker, Jonathan Cape Ltd (21 Feb 2002),
ISBN978-0-224-06242-8