VG/Good. Pale blue cloth covers with gilt lettering on spine. Spine is bumped and rubbed. Some marks to covers. Slightly faded end papers. Small pencil pricing mark on front free end. 78 pages of text. Pale blue dust jacket with red wavy lines and blue lettering on front and spine. Jacket is grubby with rubbing to most edges and some wear to corners. Jacket not price clipped.


he poet, travel writer, playwright, autobiographer, translator, and editor James Kirkup was born in 1918 in the county of Durham. After graduating from Durham University in 1941, he applied for conscientious objector status and spent five years in an agricultural labor camp, during which time he published his first poems. His first book, The Drowned Sailor and Other Poems (1947), brought him into contact with J.R. Ackerley, the celebrated editor of The Listener, who became a close friend. He subsequently published The Submerged Village and Other Poems (1951), A Correct Compassion and Other Poems (1952), A Spring Journey and Other Poems (1954), and The Descent into the Cave and Other Poems (1957).

Having taught for three years in Corsham, Wiltshire, Kirkup spent the following years abroad: in Sweden, Spain, and, from 1959 onwards, as professor of English at Tohoku University in Sendai, in Japan, where he remained until 1961. He returned to Japan in 1963, first in Tokyo until 1970, then in Nagoya until 1972. His Japanese stay profoundly influenced his later work: The Prodigal Son: Poems 1956-1959 (1959), Refusal to Conform: Last and First Poems (1963), Japan Marine (1965), and Paper Windows: Poems from Japan (1968). The years 1972-75 took him to the United States, Morocco, and Ireland. After teaching in Cardiff in 1976-77, he moved to the principality of Andorra in the Pyrenees, which has been his residence since, while keeping close ties with Japan. In that same year 1977, the publication of his poem "The love that dares to speak its name" in Gay News triggered the first blasphemy trial in England for more than a century.


Since writing simple verses and rhymes from the age of six and the publication of his first poetry book, The Drowned Sailor in 1947, Kirkup's published works now encompass several dozen collections of poetry, six volumes of autobiography, over a hundred monographs of original work and translations, not to mention thousands of shorter pieces in journals and periodicals.

In 1977 his poem The love that dares to speak its name (which deals with the homosexual love of one of the Roman centurions for Christ), became the subject of the first prosecution for blasphemous libel for over 50 years. As a result, the editor of Gay News, the periodical which published the poem, was fined and given a suspeded prison sentence. It's still illegal to publish the poem in England.