David Bromige
David Mansfield Bromige was a British-born poet and educator known for his innovative approach to language and form in poetry. Born in London in 1939, he faced significant challenges early in life, including a lengthy hospitalization due to suspected tuberculosis and the experience of surviving the Blitz during World War II. These formative experiences influenced his later writing, which often incorporates diverse voices and vivid imagery from nature. Bromige emigrated to Canada as a child and later returned to England, where he pursued an education in poetry and playwriting at the University of British Columbia and the University of California, Berkeley.
Throughout his career, Bromige received recognition for his literary contributions, including awards and fellowships. He taught at Sonoma State University, where he became part of a vibrant literary community. His poetry collections, such as "Tight Corners and What's Around Them," received critical acclaim for their exploration of rural themes and counterculture. Although Bromige experienced personal changes, including multiple marriages and relocations, his literary legacy continues to be marked by a deep engagement with language and an innovative blending of themes.
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David Bromige
Poet
- Born: October 22, 1933
- Birthplace: London, England
- Died: June 3, 2009
- Place of death: Sebastopol, California
Biography
David Mansfield Bromige was born in London, England, the second child of Harold Thomas Bromige, a director of documentary films, and Ada (Cann) Bromige, a housewife. Because of suspicion that he had tuberculosis, when he was eighteen months old, David Bromige was hospitalized, quarantined, and isolated from his family for four months. His caregivers consisted of several nurses, all of whom spoke in different dialects, an experience that Bromige claims shaped the many voices of his work. While still young, Bromige survived the Blitz (the Nazi bombing of London during World War II), and he recounts his memories of the bombings from a child’s perspective in his 1965 story “Finders Keepers.”
At age eleven, he won a scholarship to a minor public school, where he grew bored with academics but developed his athletic talents. When his parents separated in 1949, he and his mother moved to North Battleford, Saskatchewan, where he lived with his sister and her husband on the Canadian prairies. His mother returned to England to reunite with her husband, but Bromige traveled back and forth between countries, working on farms in both Canada and England.
After briefly attending the Berkshire College of Agriculture and working for a time as a student psychiatric nurse, Bromige set off on a road trip in the spring of 1953 that ended in a chance meeting with the registrar of the University of British Columbia, resulting in his unlikely acceptance. His studies in poetry and playwriting led to prizes, and Bromige also toured with the university theater company. He left school temporarily in 1957 to wed actress Ann Livingston, and the two lived in London for a year while she studied theater and performed. When they returned to British Columbia, the relationship ended, but it served as the basis of two of his later stories. Back in school, Bromige moved in with Joan Peacock, whom he had met earlier at the university. As a senior, Bromige was awarded a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship and, in 1962, when he began his studies at the University of California, Berkeley, Peacock moved there with him. Once Bromige had earned his master’s degree, the couple returned to Vancouver so that their son, Christopher, could be born there. They separated in 1966.
At Berkeley, Bromige became a teaching assistant under the tutelage of Thom Gunn, Stephen Booth, and John Montague, among others, and their influence helped bring his first book, The Gathering, to publication in 1965. The explosive creativity of the Berkeley scene influenced the conflicts and settings of his work. In 1970, Bromige accepted a full-time teaching position at Sonoma State University. He moved to a small orchard home with writer Sherrill Jaffe, and poets would drop by for critical discussions. His 1974 collection of poetry Tight Corners and What’s Around Them earned critical praise and a letter of recommendation to the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation.
Bromige’s work has been noted for exploring language and form, blending setting and themes, and using natural images like birds and ponds to represent the rural counterculture. His marriage to Jaffe ended in 1978, and he settled in Santa Rosa with Cecelia Belle, with whom he had a daughter, Margaret, in 1982.