Wilfrid Wilson Gibson

Wilfrid Wilson Gibson (2 October 1878 – 26 May 1962) was a British Georgian poet, associated with World War I but also the author of much later work.

Early work

Gibson was born in Hexham, Northumberland, and left the north for London in 1914 after his mother died. He had been publishing poems in magazines since 1895, and his first collections in book form were published by Elkin Mathews in 1902. His collections of verse plays and dramatic poems ''The Stonefolds'' and ''On The Threshold'' were published by the Samurai Press (of Cranleigh) in 1907, followed next year by the book of poems, ''The Web of Life''.

Despite his residence in London, and later in Gloucestershire, many of Gibson's poems both then and later, have Northumberland settings: ''Hexham's Market Cross''; ''Hareshaw''; and ''The Kielder Stone''. Others deal with poverty and passion amid wild Northumbrian landscapes. Still others are devoted to fishermen, industrial workers and miners, often alluding to local ballads and the rich folk-song heritage of the North East.

In London, he met both Edward Marsh and Rupert Brooke, becoming a close friend and later Brooke's literary executor (with Lascelles Abercrombie and Walter de la Mare). This was at the period when the first ''Georgian Poetry'' anthology was being hatched. Gibson was one of the insiders.

During the early part of his writing life, Wilfrid Wilson Gibson wrote poems that featured the "macabre". One such poem is " Flannan Isle", based on a real-life mystery.

Gibson was one of the founders of the Dymock poets, a community of writers who settled briefly, before the outbreak of the Great War, in the village of Dymock, in north Gloucestershire.

Some indications show that he wrote prose, as well. For instance, he wrote and argued beautifully about the merit of verse at the time of World War II. He wrote a piece of criticism on ''Italian Nationalism and English Letters'' by Harry W. Rudman regarding the contributions made by Italian exiles in England to English literature, which were in the form of poetry by and large. He also wrote criticism on ''The Burning Oracle: Studies in the Poetry of Action'' by G. Wilson Knight, wherein he commends the fact that Knight sees the creative energy of living writers not only in the creation of artworks, but also in the creation of life itself.

Death and reputation

Gibson died on 26 May 1962, in Virginia Water, Surrey.

His reputation was eclipsed somewhat by the Ezra Pound-T. S. Eliot school of Modernist poetry,Arthur Clutton-Brock (TLS, 24 February 1927, ''Five Modern Poets'') considers Gibson alongside Eliot, AE, Herbert Read and James Stephens (pp 113-114). It is concluded there that "Mr Gibson's poetry... has its own specific qualities and is, in its essentials unique". In 1942 Philip Tomlinson refers to Gibson as "this distinguished poet" (TLS 31 January 1942 p. 57). though his work remained popular.

Further reading

* Dominic Hibberd, ''Wilfrid Gibson and Harold Monro, the Pioneers'' (Cecil Woolf, 2006)

Notes

External links

Page at ''Spartacus''

Elizabeth Whitcomb Houghton Collection
containing letters by Gibson

Gloucestershire Poets, Writers and Artists Collection
University of Gloucestershire Archives and Special Collections
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* Archival material at

{{DEFAULTSORT:Gibson, Wilfred Wil
1878 births
1962 deaths
20th-century English poets
People from Hexham
British Army soldiers
British Army personnel of World War I
British World War I poets
20th-century English male writers
English male poets
People from Dymock