Wilfrid Wilson Gibson (2 October 1878 – 26 May 1962) was a British
Georgian poet, who was associated with
World War I but continued publishing poetry into the 1940s and 1950s.
Early work
Gibson was born in
Hexham,
Northumberland. His parents were Elizabeth Judith Frances (born Walton) and John Pattison Gibson. Her father was a chemist who was interested in photography and antiquarianism.[1] His elder sister
Elizabeth, who became his teacher and mentor, also became a published poet.[2] He left the north for London in 1914 after his mother died. He had been publishing poems in magazines since 1895, and his first collections in book form were published by
Elkin Mathews in 1902. His collections of verse plays and dramatic poems The Stonefolds and On The Threshold were published by the Samurai Press (of
Cranleigh) in 1907, followed next year by the book of poems, The Web of Life.[3]
Despite his residence in London, and later in
Gloucestershire, many of Gibson's poems both then and later, have Northumberland settings: Hexham's Market Cross; Hareshaw; and The Kielder Stone. Others deal with poverty and passion amid wild Northumbrian landscapes. Still others are devoted to fishermen, industrial workers and miners, often alluding to local ballads and the rich folk-song heritage of the
North East.
During the early part of his writing life, Wilfrid Wilson Gibson wrote poems that featured the "macabre". One such poem is "
Flannan Isle", based on
a real-life mystery.
Gibson was one of the founders of the
Dymock poets, a group of writers who lived in and around the village of
Dymock, on the Gloucestershire/Herefordshire border, in the years immediately before the outbreak of the
First World War.[6]
Gibson also published plays, as well as several prose works. For instance, he wrote and argued beautifully about the merit of verse at the time of World War II.[7] He wrote a piece of criticism on Italian Nationalism and English Letters by Harry W. Rudman regarding the contributions made by Italian exiles in England to English literature, which were in the form of poetry by and large.[8] He also wrote criticism on The Burning Oracle: Studies in the Poetry of Action by G. Wilson Knight, wherein he commends the fact that Knight sees the creative energy of living writers not only in the creation of artworks, but also in the creation of life itself.[9]
^'"Young men who knew that the age demanded something new in poetry were impressed by the austerity of his little 'working class' plays". (Joy Grant, Harold Monro & the Poetry Bookshop (1966), p. 19. Whistler p. 281 remarks on the colloquial, homespun realism that at first was admired in Gibson.
^Gibson met de la Mare, and quite a number of other poets, through Marsh (Theresa Whistler, Imagination of the Heart: The Life of Walter de la Mare (1993), p. 205 and 208) in 1912. It was with de la Mare that Gibson was to make the closest friendship. Gentle and unlucky, he himself best fitted Brooke's description of those good-hearted and simple and nice poets he wanted to protect.
^Paul Delany, The Neo-Pagans (1987), p. 199, writes of a business lunch 19 September 1912 at Marsh's flat, with Gibson,
John Drinkwater,
Harold Monro and
Arundel del Re.
^The Literary Encyclopedia states that his reputation plummeted. Whistler p. 282 has Gibson's was the saddest fate of all the Georgians. Once acclaimed as the leader of an exciting new movement, , when that movement came into derision the critics found in him the epitome of its vices.
^Arthur Clutton-Brock (TLS, 24 February 1927, Five Modern Poets) considers Gibson alongside Eliot,
AE,
Herbert Read and
James Stephens (pp 113-114). It is concluded there that "Mr Gibson's poetry... has its own specific qualities and is, in its essentials unique". In 1942 Philip Tomlinson refers to Gibson as "this distinguished poet" (TLS 31 January 1942 p. 57).