Thomas Moore Raworth (19 July 1938 – 8 February 2017) was an English-Irish poet, publisher, editor, and teacher who published over 40 books of poetry and prose during his life. His work has been translated and published in many countries. Raworth was a key figure in the British Poetry Revival.
Life and work
Early life
Raworth was born on 19 July 1938 in Bexleyheath, Kent, and grew up in Welling, the neighbouring town. His family maintained its strong Irish connections while he was growing up, something which would leave an impression on Raworth's sense of himself as a poet. His mother's family lived in the same house in Dublin as Seán O'Casey while the playwright was working on Juno and the Paycock. When he was 52 years old, Raworth acquired an Irish passport.
He was educated at St. Stephen's Primary School, Welling, Kent (1943–1949); St Joseph's Academy, Blackheath, London S.E.3. (1949–1954); and at the University of Essex (1967–1970), where he earned a Master's degree in 1970. He left school at sixteen and worked at a variety of jobs. According to Raworth:
What followed was a series of long poems in this particular mode—after Ace came Writing (composed 1975–77; published 1982), Catacoustics (composed 1978–81; published 1991) and West Wind (composed 1982–83; published 1984). Subsequent projects extended this mode into a kaleidoscopic sequence of 14-line poems (not exactly "sonnets") Although a number of major poems still remained uncollected at the time, much of this work was subsequently published: beginning with Windmills in Flames (2010). Whatever didn’t make it into the latter publication, found its way into Structures from Motion and As When, both published in 2015. A book of Raworth's prose, Earn your Milk, was published in 2009. The latter included all of his uncollected prose, including "uncategorizable prose-work", long out-of-print: A Serial Biography (1969), which has been described as an "assembly of memoir and reportage."
Several boxes of Raworth's notebooks, typescripts, and correspondence (ca. 1968–1977) are held at the University of Connecticut's Dodd Research Center. At the time of his death, he was considered by many to be, arguably, the finest British poet of his generation. In the autumn of 2016, he began cancer treatments, but on 23 January 2017 he wrote the final entry on his blog:
Raworth died on 8 February 2017 at the age of 78.