Nicholas Moore
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Nicholas Moore (16 November 1918 – 1986) was an English poet, associated with the New Apocalyptics in the 1940s, who later dropped out of the literary world.
Moore was born in Cambridge; his father was the philosopher G. E. Moore. He was educated at the Dragon School, Oxford, Leighton Park School, Reading, the University of St. Andrews, and Trinity College, Cambridge. Moore published a literary review, Seven (1938–1940), while still an undergraduate (Seven, Magazine of People's Writing, with a complex later history: he edited it with John Goodland; it later appeared edited by Gordon Cruikshank, and then Sydney D. Tremayne, after Randall Swingler bought it in 1941 from Philip O'Connor).
While in Cambridge he became closely involved with literary London, in particular Tambimuttu. He published pamphlets under the Poetry London imprint in 1941 (of George Scurfield, G. S. Fraser, Anne Ridler and his own work). This led to Moore becoming Tambimuttu's assistant. He later worked for the Grey Walls Press.
The Glass Tower, a selected poems collection from 1944, appeared with illustrations by Lucien Freud. Later he encountered difficulty publishing; he was in the unusual position for a British poet of having a higher reputation in the USA. His association with the 'romantics' of the 1940s was in fact rather an inaccurate reflection of his style.
In the 1950s he worked as a gardener, writing a book The tall bearded iris (1956). In 1968 he entered 31 separate pseudonymous translations of a single Baudelaire poem, in a competition for the Sunday Times, run by George Steiner. This work was eventually published, as Spleen; it is now available online.
Longings of the Acrobats, a selected poems volume, was edited by Peter Riley and published 1990 by Carcanet Press. An interview with Riley concerning Moore's rediscovery and later years appears as a documentary element within the "Guilty River" chapter of Iain Sinclair's novel Downriver.
[edit] External links
- Spleen: Thirty-one versions of Baudelaire's Je suis comme le roi... by Nicholas Moore was first published in book form as Spleen 1973 by Blacksuede Boot Press and Menard Press.
