Barry Cole (born 13 November 1936) was a poet and novelist from Woking, Surrey.

Biography

Cole was born in

Woking, Surrey Woking ( ) is a town and borough status in the United Kingdom, borough in north-west Surrey, England, around from central London. It appears in Domesday Book as ''Wochinges'', and its name probably derives from that of a Anglo-Saxon settleme ...

and was educated at Balham Secondary School in

London London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...

. He did military service in the

Royal Air Force The Royal Air Force (RAF) is the Air force, air and space force of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies. It was formed towards the end of the World War I, First World War on 1 April 1918, on the merger of t ...

from 1955 to 1957. His subsequent career included 1958 employment with

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news agency in London, working as a reporter (1965–70), as a senior editor (1974–94) at the

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, London. He was Northern Arts Fellow at the

University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne Newcastle University (legally the University of Newcastle upon Tyne) is a public research university based in Newcastle upon Tyne, England. It has overseas campuses in Singapore and Malaysia. The university is a red brick university and a memb ...

and

Durham University Durham University (legally the University of Durham) is a collegiate university, collegiate public university, public research university in Durham, England, founded by an Act of Parliament (UK), Act of Parliament in 1832 and incorporated by r ...

(1970–72).David Belbin
"Barry Cole: Critically acclaimed novelist and poet whose career was overshadowed by the death of his friend BS Johnson"
''The Independent'', 27 July 2014. He published several collections of poems and four novels.WorldCat
/ref> His 1968 poetry collection, ''Moonsearch'', was a Poetry Book Society recommendation.John Lucas
"Other lives: Barry Cole obituary"
''The Guardian'', 15 July 2014. In 2015, Shoestring Press published a festschrift celebrating his life, edited by John Lucas. This included poems, a story, photographs, essays and Cole's final, innovative sequence of 13 poems, Broken Sonnets, which are marked by the use of ellipses to suggest gaps of memory or words that are too painful to be given expression. In 1959, he married Rita Linihan and they had three daughters, Celia, Rebecca, and Jessica. He was a close friend of the writer

Bryan Johnson Bryan Johnson (born August 22, 1977) is an American entrepreneur, venture capitalist, writer and author. He is the founder and former CEO of Kernel, a company creating devices that monitor and record brain activity, and OS Fund, a venture ca ...

, whose 1973 suicide had a traumatic effect on Cole.

Bibliography

Poetry * ''Blood Ties'' (Turret Books, 1967) * ''Moonsearch'' (1968) * ''Ulysses in the Town of Coloured Glass'' (London, Turret, 1968) * ''The Visitors'' (1970) * ''Vanessa in the City'' (Trigram Press, 1971) * ''Pathetic Fallacies'' (London, Eyre Methuen, 1973) * ''The Rehousing of Scaffardi'' (Richmond, Surrey: Keepsake Press, 1976) * ''Dedications'' (Byron Press: 1977) * ''Inside Outside: New and Selected Poems'' (Shoestring Press, 1997, ) * ''Ghosts Are People Too'' (Shoestring Press, 2003) * ''Broken Sonnets'' (privately printed 'eyelet' chap book, 2008) Novels * ''A Run Across the Island'' (1968) * ''Joseph Winter's Patronage'' (1969) * ''In Search of Rita'' (Methuen, 1970) * ''The Giver'' (Methuen, 1971)

References

External links

* John Lucas
"Other lives: Barry Cole obituary"
''The Guardian'', 15 July 2014. 1936 births 2014 deaths Academics of Durham University English male poets People from Woking Writers from Surrey 20th-century English poets 20th-century English male writers {{England-writer-stub