Thomas Blackburn
Thomas Eliel Fenwick Blackburn was a British poet, educator, and novelist, born on February 10, 1916, in Hensingham, Cumberland. He experienced a troubled childhood, largely influenced by his father's repressive nature, which profoundly shaped his later life and work. Struggling with personal demons, including alcohol and prescription drug dependence, Blackburn's tumultuous experiences informed his poetry, leading to themes of haunted self-examination. He pursued a career in education, teaching at various institutions, including the College of St. Mark and St. John, where he served as Chair of the English Department from 1960 to 1973. Blackburn gained recognition as a poet in the 1950s, winning accolades such as the Guinness Poetry Prize in 1960 and being a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. His notable works include "In the Fire" and "The Next Word." Blackburn's legacy is marked by his complex relationship with language, which he regarded as a means to make sense of his troubled existence. He passed away in Wales on August 13, 1977.
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Subject Terms
Thomas Blackburn
Poet
- Born: February 10, 1916
- Birthplace: Hensingham, Cumberland, England
- Died: August 13, 1977
- Place of death: Wales
Biography
Thomas Eliel Fenwick Blackburn was born the son of a clergyman on February 10, 1916, in Hensingham, Cumberland, in the United Kingdom. In A Clip of Steel, his autobiography, his father was depicted as tense and repressive and his own childhood as having been tormented. His daughter Julia Blackburn, the author of a novel, The Book of Color, based upon their family, represents her grandfather Eliel as a man cursed by a mystic who goes on to become a minister; and she represents her father as a man unable to cast out his own demons who spends his final years in Bedlam.
In an essay about her father, Julia Blackburn speaks of his problem with alcohol, which began in his early twenties. “But the real problem,” she wrote, “was the pills. During the war he was unthinkingly prescribed a new barbiturate drug called sodium amytal, to calm him down when he got nervous.. . . The pills combined with the drink to make him increasingly mad, but no-one [sic] was aware of the cause.” The tormented youth became a tormented adult who, according to his daughter, “was two unconnected people,” one loving, the other abusive. Her father, she said, when he emerged from abusive episodes, turned to poetry “to make the words come and to bring some light into the darkness.” From her account of living with the tormented poet, it is no wonder that he took words so seriously (he told his daughter that “words have the magical power to make sense of things”) or that his poetry should be, as it is said to be, “noted [among other qualities] for haunted self- examination.”
In the half of his life not controlled by his demons, Blackburn became an educator, receiving his own education at Bromsgrove and Durham University. He graduated from the latter institution in 1940. He began his teaching career at Marylebone Grammar School, after which he moved on to college teaching. From 1960 until 1973 he was Chair of the English Department at the College of St. Mark and St. John in Chelsea. He retired from teaching at the age of sixty. After his official retirement from teaching, he was Centennial Professor Emeritus of English Literature and Senior Research Scholar at Swarthmore College.
Blackburn, for his use of the medium with which he most consistently made sense of his world, came to be recognized as a poet in the 1950’s. In 1956 and 1957, he was a Gregory Fellow at Leeds University. He was also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. In 1960, he won the Guinness Poetry Prize. Among his books of poems are In the Fire and The Next Word. Thomas Eliel Fenwick Blackburn, educator, poet, novelist, and critic, died in Wales on August 13, 1977.