Gael Turnbull (7 April 1928 – 2 July 2004) was a Scottish poet who was an important figure in the British Poetry Revival of the 1960s and 1970s.
Biography
Turnbull was born in Edinburgh and grew up in Northern England and in Canada, where he moved with his parents at the beginning of World War II. He studied Natural Sciences at Christ's College, Cambridge, and graduated in Medicine from the University of Pennsylvania in 1951. As a doctor and anesthetist, he worked in Ontario; London, England; Ventura, California; Worcester; and Barrow-in-Furness. His poems also appeared in Origin, Cid Corman's magazine.
He returned to Edinburgh after he retired from medical practice in 1989. In this city, he worked on what he termed kinetic poems; texts for installation in which the movement of the reader and/or of the text became part of the reading experience. He died on a visit to Herefordshire of a sudden brain hemorrhage.
Selected bibliography
- Trio: First Poems by Gael Turnbull, Phyllis Webb, and Eli Mandel, with Phyllis Webb and Eli Mandel. Toronto: Contact Press (1954).