Charles Causley
Charles Causley was a prominent Cornish poet, born on August 24, 1917, in Launceston, Cornwall. He is known for his traditionalist approach to poetry, often reviving the ballad form and incorporating children's poems into his adult collections. His work frequently features visionary imagery and themes rooted in his Christian faith. Causley's upbringing was marked by personal loss, as his father died when he was just seven, leading him to live with his mother and grandmother. He initially worked in clerical jobs that he found unfulfilling while nurturing a passion for writing. After serving in the navy during World War II, he returned to education as a primary school teacher. Causley's literary career began in earnest with the publication of his first poetry collection in 1951, and he garnered admiration from contemporaries like John Betjeman and Ted Hughes. Throughout his lifetime, Causley received several prestigious awards, including the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry and was named a Commander of the Order of the British Empire. He passed away on November 4, 2003, and is interred in Launceston, close to his birthplace.
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Charles Causley
Poet
- Born: August 24, 1917
- Birthplace: Launceston, Cornwall, United Kingdom
- Died: November 4, 2003
- Place of death: Launceston, Cornwall, United Kingdom
Biography
Throughout his career, Charles Stanley Causley retained his sense of rootedness and heritage. Born in Launceston, a market town in inland Cornwall, on August 24, 1917, Causley remained Cornish, Christian, and traditionalist in form and subject matter, often attempting to revive the “ballad” even within modern poetry; he also inserted children’s poems into his collections of poetry for adults, arguing that “the only difference between an adult poem and a children’s poem is the range of the audience.” However, despite this traditionalism, Causley is also known for his “strange individuality”; he is often compared to William Blake, and many of his best poems contain disturbing and often visionary images.
Causley’s father had been a groom and gardener; however, becoming an invalid due to wounds sustained during World War I, he wasted away and eventually died of tuberculosis in 1924, when Causley was seven years old. Causley and his mother lived at his grandmother’s cottage by the river Kensey. Since the house was inclined to flood, they shortly moved to a home higher up in town, where Causley lived for the next ten years. As an elementary student, Causley tried to write romantic short stories and began a novel at the age of nine. However, he left school at fifteen to begin working first as a clerk in a builder’s office and then in an electrical supply company, jobs he intensely disliked but which he held for seven years. During these years, he continued to write, publishing three one-act plays in the late 1930’s; he also performed on piano in a local dance band and wrote operatic librettos. Causley then turned away from prose and drama to begin writing poetry. In the autumn of 1939, he registered for the navy, and in August 1940 was assigned to the destroyer Eclipse.
Causley found he did not enjoy navy life, but remained in the service until 1946. At that time, he returned to Launceston and entered the Petersborough Teacher’s Training College, eventually becoming a primary school teacher at the same Launceston school he himself had attended. Causley regretted never marrying or having children of his own; however, he gained much satisfaction from his teaching career and remained in it until his retirement.
In 1951, Causley brought out his first collection of poems, Farewell, Aggie Weston, in which he wrote primarily about the experience of World War II from the point of view of the ordinary enlisted man. By the time of Survivor’s Leave (1953), his second volume, Causley had begun to perfect the traditionalist style of rhythm and rhyme for which he later became known. Further, in Union Street (1957), he expanded his themes to include unabashedly Christian poems such as “I Am the Great Sun.”
Among his contemporaries, John Betjeman, Ted Hughes, and Philip Larkin were admirers of Causley’s poetry; Larkin even addressed a poem to Causley, “Dear Charles, My Muse Asleep or Dead.” After Betjeman’s death, many wanted Causley to become the next British Poet Laureate. In 1958, Causley was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature; other honors include the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry in 1967, a Cholmondeley Award in 1971, a book of poems published in his honor in 1982, a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) award in 1986, and the Heywood Hill Literary Prize in 2000. Causley died on November 4, 2003, at the age of eighty-six. He is buried in Launceston, barely a hundred yards from where he was born.