John Thompson
John Thompson was an English poet and academic born on March 17, 1938, in Timperly, Cheshire. Following the death of his father when he was just two years old, Thompson faced significant challenges, including his mother's eventual remarriage and relocation to Australia, which left him feeling abandoned. Despite these early hardships, he excelled academically, earning a scholarship to the esteemed Manchester Grammar School and later obtaining an honors degree in psychology from the University of Sheffield. After serving in the British Army, Thompson immigrated to the United States, where he earned a Ph.D. in comparative literature and began his teaching career at Mount Allison University in Canada.
Known for his charismatic and theatrical teaching style, Thompson gained the admiration of his students, who supported him during struggles for tenure. However, his personal life suffered, marked by depression and alcoholism, particularly following a divorce and a devastating fire that destroyed his manuscripts. Thompson's poetic works, including "At the Edge of the Chopping There Are No Secrets" and "Stilt Jack," reflect his complex relationship with beauty and despair, often utilizing innovative structures like the Persian ghazal. His life, though marked by misfortune, was dedicated to exploring the depths of human experience through poetry, until his untimely death at the age of thirty-eight, which remains shrouded in uncertainty regarding its cause.
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John Thompson
Poet
- Born: March 17, 1938
- Birthplace: Timperly, Chesire, England
- Died: April 26, 1976
- Place of death: Jolicure, New Brunswick, Canada
Biography
John Thompson was born March 17, 1938, in Timperly, Chesire, England. When Thompson was two, his father died of a heart attack. His mother, a factory worker facing economic uncertainties with the advent of war, sent Thompson to live with a relative in Manchester. She remarried, and moved to Australia. Thompson would be deeply scarred by his mother’s abandonment.
Thompson found rewards in schooling and in 1949 was accepted on scholarship to the prestigious Manchester Grammar School. He completed an honors degree in psychology at the University of Sheffield in 1958 and then served his obligatory two years in the British Army. Upon discharge, he moved to the United States, where he completed his graduate work in comparative literature at Michigan State University, taking his Ph.D. in 1966. By then he was married and had a daughter. He had begun to experiment with verse modeled on the poetry of surrealist René Char, whose poems he had translated for his dissertation.
Interested in teaching, he accepted a position at New Brunswick’s Mount Allison University, enamored of its wilderness setting. Indeed, he moved his family to a rented house that skirted the Tantramar Marshes, a remote expanse that had inspired generations of Canadian nature poets. A charismatic, often theatrical teacher, Thompson earned the respect of his students—indeed, when the administration hesitated in 1969 to vote him tenure (they found him unsuited for the classroom), his students protested and the university eventually agreed. However, the struggle to keep his job deeply affected Thompson. His marriage disintegrated, and Thompson began to wrestle with depression, which he sought to numb with heavy drinking.
He completed his first book of poems, At the Edge of the Chopping There Are No Secrets, in 1973, its enigmatic title suggesting the poems themselves: spare, elliptical poems that investigated the struggle the poet faced against the oppressive weight of silence. Everyday objects were gathered into Thompson’s poetic line and given resonance that spoke of a poet’s struggle to tap beauty in a harsh environment. Given the poems’ obscurity, the critical reception was cool. Discouraged, Thompson took a sabbatical leave and moved to Toronto; while he was there, his rural home with all his manuscripts burned to the ground. His depression deepened.
Thompson returned to teaching in the fall, 1975, and worked to complete Stilt Jack, a collection of highly wrought poems that experimented with an ancient Persian form known as the ghazal, a poem with five unrelated couplets, each focused on its own specific image, that achieved unity through a texture of subtle associations. Although hospitalized for three months in December for alcohol abuse, he finished the manuscript on April 24, 1976; two days later, he was found comatose from a mixture of prescription pills and alcohol. His death at age of thirty-eight was never officially ruled a suicide. In a lifetime burdened by misfortune, Thompson found in poetry the affirmation of spiritual power in an otherwise forbiddingly empty world.