HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

Sir Geoffrey William Hill,
FRSL The Royal Society of Literature (RSL) is a learned society founded in 1820 by George IV of the United Kingdom, King George IV to "reward literary merit and excite literary talent". A charity that represents the voice of literature in the UK, the ...
(18 June 1932 – 30 June 2016) was an English poet, professor emeritus of English literature and religion, and former co-director of the Editorial Institute, at
Boston University Boston University (BU) is a Private university, private research university in Boston, Massachusetts, United States. BU was founded in 1839 by a group of Boston Methodism, Methodists with its original campus in Newbury (town), Vermont, Newbur ...
. Hill has been considered to be among the most distinguished poets of his generation and was called the "greatest living poet in the English language."Harold Bloom, ed. ''Geoffrey Hill (Bloom's Modern Critical Views)'', Infobase Publishing, 1986. From 2010 to 2015 he held the position of Professor of Poetry in the
University of Oxford The University of Oxford is a collegiate university, collegiate research university in Oxford, England. There is evidence of teaching as early as 1096, making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the List of oldest un ...
. Following his receiving the Truman Capote Award for Literary Criticism in 2009 for his ''Collected Critical Writings'', and the publication of ''Broken Hierarchies (Poems 1952–2012)'', Hill is recognised as one of the principal contributors to poetry and criticism in the 20th and 21st centuries.


Biography

Geoffrey Hill was born in
Bromsgrove Bromsgrove is a town in Worcestershire, England, about north-east of Worcester and south-west of Birmingham city centre. It had a population of 34,755 in at the 2021 census. It gives its name to the wider Bromsgrove District, of which it is ...
,
Worcestershire Worcestershire ( , ; written abbreviation: Worcs) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in the West Midlands (region), West Midlands of England. It is bordered by Shropshire, Staffordshire, and the West Midlands (county), West ...
,
England England is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is located on the island of Great Britain, of which it covers about 62%, and List of islands of England, more than 100 smaller adjacent islands. It ...
, in 1932, the son of a police constable. When he was six, his family moved to nearby Fairfield in
Worcestershire Worcestershire ( , ; written abbreviation: Worcs) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in the West Midlands (region), West Midlands of England. It is bordered by Shropshire, Staffordshire, and the West Midlands (county), West ...
, where he attended the local primary school, then the grammar school in Bromsgrove. "As an only child, he developed the habit of going for long walks alone, as an adolescent deliberating and composing poems as he muttered to the stones and trees." On these walks he often carried with him Oscar Williams' '' A Little Treasury of Modern Poetry'' (1946), and Hill speculates: "there was probably a time when I knew every poem in that anthology by heart." In 1950, he was admitted to
Keble College, Oxford Keble College () is one of the Colleges of the University of Oxford, constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. Its main buildings are on Parks Road, opposite the Oxford University Museum of Natural History, University Museum a ...
, to read English, where he published his first poems in 1952, at the age of twenty, in an eponymous Fantasy Press volume (though he had published work in the ''Oxford Guardian''—the magazine of the University Liberal Club—and ''
The Isis "The Isis" ( ) is an alternative name for the River Thames, used from its source in the Cotswolds until it is joined by the River Thame at Dorchester-on-Thames, Dorchester in Oxfordshire. Notably, the Isis flows through Oxford and has given i ...
''). Upon graduation from
Oxford Oxford () is a City status in the United Kingdom, cathedral city and non-metropolitan district in Oxfordshire, England, of which it is the county town. The city is home to the University of Oxford, the List of oldest universities in continuou ...
with a first, Hill embarked on an academic career, teaching at the
University of Leeds The University of Leeds is a public research university in Leeds, West Yorkshire, England. It was established in 1874 as the Yorkshire College of Science. In 1884, it merged with the Leeds School of Medicine (established 1831) and was renamed Y ...
from 1954 until 1980, from 1976 as
professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an Academy, academic rank at university, universities and other tertiary education, post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin ...
of
English Literature English literature is literature written in the English language from the English-speaking world. The English language has developed over more than 1,400 years. The earliest forms of English, a set of Anglo-Frisian languages, Anglo-Frisian d ...
. After leaving Leeds, he spent a year at the
University of Bristol The University of Bristol is a public university, public research university in Bristol, England. It received its royal charter in 1909, although it can trace its roots to a Merchant Venturers' school founded in 1595 and University College, Br ...
on a Churchill Scholarship before becoming a teaching fellow at
Emmanuel College, Cambridge Emmanuel College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. The college was founded in 1584 by Sir Walter Mildmay, Chancellor of the Exchequer to Elizabeth I. The site on which the college sits was once a priory for Dominican mo ...
, where he taught from 1981 until 1988. He then moved to the
United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...
, to serve as
University Professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an academic rank at universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a 'person who professes'. Professors ...
and Professor of Literature and Religion at Boston University. In 2000, with
Christopher Ricks Sir Christopher Bruce Ricks (born 18 September 1933) is a British literary critic and scholar. He is the William M. and Sara B. Warren Professor of the Humanities at Boston University (US), co-director of the Editorial Institute at Boston ...
, he was co-founder of the Editorial Institute at Boston University, dedicated to training students in editorial method. In 2006, he moved back to Cambridge, England. Hill was a
Christian A Christian () is a person who follows or adheres to Christianity, a Monotheism, monotheistic Abrahamic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus in Christianity, Jesus Christ. Christians form the largest religious community in the wo ...
. He died in Cambridge on 30 June 2016.


Marriages

Hill was married twice. His first marriage to Nancy Whittaker, which produced four children, Julian, Andrew, Jeremy and Bethany, ended in divorce. His second marriage to the American librettist, and Anglican priest, Alice Goodman occurred in 1987. The couple had a daughter, Alberta. The marriage lasted until Hill's death.


Awards and honours

''Mercian Hymns'' won the
Alice Hunt Bartlett Prize The Alice Hunt Bartlett Prize was awarded by the Poetry Society of London for a collection of poetry. It is named after Alice Hunt Bartlett who was the American editor of the society's ''Poetry Review'' from 1923 to 1949. The prize was establishe ...
and the inaugural Whitbread Award for Poetry in 1971. Hill won as well the Eric Gregory Award in 1961. Hill delivered the 1998 Warton Lecture on English Poetry. Hill was awarded an honorary D.Litt. degree by the University of Leeds in 1988, the same year he received an Ingram Merrill Foundation Award. He was also an Honorary Fellow of Keble College, Oxford; an Honorary Fellow of
Emmanuel College, Cambridge Emmanuel College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. The college was founded in 1584 by Sir Walter Mildmay, Chancellor of the Exchequer to Elizabeth I. The site on which the college sits was once a priory for Dominican mo ...
; a Fellow of the
Royal Society of Literature The Royal Society of Literature (RSL) is a learned society founded in 1820 by King George IV to "reward literary merit and excite literary talent". A charity that represents the voice of literature in the UK, the RSL has about 800 Fellows, elect ...
; and a Fellow of the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (The Academy) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, and other ...
. In 2009, his ''Collected Critical Writings'' won the Truman Capote Award for Literary Criticism, the largest annual cash prize in English-language literary criticism. Hill was created a
Knight Bachelor The title of Knight Bachelor is the basic rank granted to a man who has been knighted by the monarch but not inducted as a member of one of the organised Order of chivalry, orders of chivalry; it is a part of the Orders, decorations, and medals ...
in the 2012
New Year Honours The New Year Honours is a part of the British honours system, with New Year's Day, 1 January, being marked by naming new members of orders of chivalry and recipients of other official honours. A number of other Commonwealth realms also mark this ...
for services to literature.


Oxford candidacy

In March 2010 Hill was confirmed as a candidate in the election of the Professor of Poetry in the
University of Oxford The University of Oxford is a collegiate university, collegiate research university in Oxford, England. There is evidence of teaching as early as 1096, making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the List of oldest un ...
, with a broad base of academic support. He was ultimately successful, and delivered his 15 lectures in the academic years 2010 to 2015. The lectures progressed chronologically, beginning with
Shakespeare's sonnets William Shakespeare (1565 –1616) wrote sonnets on a variety of themes. When discussing or referring to Shakespeare's sonnets, it is almost always a reference to the 154 sonnets that were first published all together in a quarto in 1609. Howe ...
and concluding with a critique of Philip Larkin's poem " Church Going".


Writing

Hill's poetry encompasses a variety of styles, from the dense and allusive writing of ''King Log'' (1968) and ''Canaan'' (1997) through the simplified syntax of the sequence "The Pentecost Castle" in ''Tenebrae'' (1978), on to the more accessible poems of ''Mercian Hymns'' (1971), a series of 30 poems (sometimes called "prose-poems", a label which Hill rejects in favour of "versets") which juxtapose the history of
Offa Offa ( 29 July 796 AD) was King of Mercia, a kingdom of Anglo-Saxon England, from 757 until his death in 796. The son of Thingfrith and a descendant of Eowa, Offa came to the throne after a period of civil war following the assassination of ...
, eighth-century ruler of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of
Mercia Mercia (, was one of the principal kingdoms founded at the end of Sub-Roman Britain; the area was settled by Anglo-Saxons in an era called the Heptarchy. It was centred on the River Trent and its tributaries, in a region now known as the Midlan ...
, with Hill's own childhood in the modern Mercia of the West Midlands.
Seamus Heaney Seamus Justin Heaney (13 April 1939 – 30 August 2013) was an Irish Irish poetry, poet, playwright and translator. He received the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature. Among his best-known works is ''Death of a Naturalist'' (1966), his first m ...
said of Hill: "He has a strong sense of the importance of the maintenance of speech, a deep scholarly sense of the religious and political underpinning of everything in Britain." Kenneth Haynes, editor of ''Broken Hierarchies'', commented: "the annotation is not the hard part with Hill's poems... the difficulty only begins after looking things up". Elegy is Hill's dominant mode; he is a poet of phrases rather than cadences. Regarding both his style and subject, Hill is often described as a "difficult" poet. In an interview in ''
The Paris Review ''The Paris Review'' is a quarterly English-language literary magazine established in Paris in 1953 by Harold L. Humes, Peter Matthiessen, and George Plimpton. In its first five years, ''The Paris Review'' published new works by Jack Kerouac, ...
'' (2000), which published Hill's early poem "Genesis" when he was still at Oxford, Hill defended the right of poets to difficulty as a form of resistance to the demeaning simplifications imposed by 'maestros of the world'. Hill was consistently drawn to morally problematic and violent episodes in British and European history and has written poetic responses to the
Holocaust The Holocaust (), known in Hebrew language, Hebrew as the (), was the genocide of History of the Jews in Europe, European Jews during World War II. From 1941 to 1945, Nazi Germany and Collaboration with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy ...
in English, "Two Formal Elegies", "September Song" and " Ovid in the Third Reich". His accounts of landscape (especially that of his native Worcestershire) are as intense as his encounters with history. Hill has also worked in theatre – in 1978, the National Theatre 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 ...
staged his 'version for the English stage' of ''Brand'' by
Henrik Ibsen Henrik Johan Ibsen (; ; 20 March 1828 – 23 May 1906) was a Norwegian playwright, poet and actor. Ibsen is considered the world's pre-eminent dramatist of the 19th century and is often referred to as "the father of modern drama." He pioneered ...
, written in rhyming verse. Hill's distaste for conclusion, however, has led him, in 2000's ''Speech! Speech!'' (118), to scorn the following argument as a glib get-out: 'ACCESSIBLE / traded as DEMOCRATIC, he answers / as he answers móst things these days , easily.' Throughout his corpus Hill is uncomfortable with the muffling of truth-telling that verse designed to sound well, for its contrivances of harmony, must permit. The constant buffets of Hill's suspicion of lyric eloquence—can it truly ''be'' eloquent?—against his talent for it (in ''Syon'', a sky is 'livid with unshed snow') become in the poems a sort of battle in style, where passages of singing force (''ToL'': 'The ferns / are breast-high, head-high, the days / lustrous, with their hinterlands of thunder') are balanced with prosaic ones of academese and inscrutable syntax. In the long interview collected in Haffenden's ''Viewpoints'' there is described the poet warring himself to witness honestly, to make language as tool say truly what he believes is true of the world.


Criticism

The violence of Hill's aesthetic has been criticised by the Irish poet-critic Tom Paulin, who draws attention to the poet's use of the
Virgil Publius Vergilius Maro (; 15 October 70 BC21 September 19 BC), usually called Virgil or Vergil ( ) in English, was an ancient Rome, ancient Roman poet of the Augustan literature (ancient Rome), Augustan period. He composed three of the most fa ...
ian trope of 'rivers of blood' – as deployed infamously by
Enoch Powell John Enoch Powell (16 June 19128 February 1998) was a British politician, scholar and writer. He served as Member of Parliament (United Kingdom), Member of Parliament (MP) for Wolverhampton South West for the Conservative Party (UK), Conserv ...
– to suggest that despite Hill's multi-layered irony and techniques of reflection, his lyrics draw their energies from an outmoded nationalism, expressed in what Hugh Haughton has described as a 'language of the past largely invented by the Victorians'. Yet as Raphael Ingelbien notes, "Hill's England ... is a landscape which is fraught with the traces of a history that stretches so far back that it relativizes the Empire and its aftermath".
Harold Bloom Harold Bloom (July 11, 1930 – October 14, 2019) was an American literary critic and the Sterling Professor of humanities at Yale University. In 2017, Bloom was called "probably the most famous literary critic in the English-speaking world". Af ...
has called him "the strongest British poet now active." For his part, Hill addressed some of the misperceptions about his political and cultural beliefs in a '' Guardian'' interview in 2002. There he suggested that his affection for the "radical Tories" of the 19th century, while recently misunderstood as reactionary, was actually evidence of a progressive bent tracing back to his working-class roots. He also indicated that he could no longer draw a firm distinction between "Blairite Labour" and the Thatcher-era Conservatives, lamenting that both parties had become solely oriented toward "materialism". Hill's style has been subjected to parody: Wendy Cope includes a two-stanza parody of the ''Mercian Hymns'' entitled "Duffa Rex" in ''Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis'' published by
Faber & Faber Faber and Faber Limited, commonly known as Faber & Faber or simply Faber, is an independent publishing house in London. Published authors and poets include T. S. Eliot (an early Faber editor and director), W. H. Auden, C. S. Lewis, Margaret S ...
.


Bibliography


Books of poems

* Geoffrey Hill. Oxford: Fantasy Press, 1952. "The Fantasy Poets," no. 11. 8 pp. * '' For the Unfallen: Poems 1952-1958.'' London: Andre Deutsch, 1959. * ''Preghiere''. Leeds: School of English, University of Leeds, 1964. "Northern House Pamphlets Poets" series. Contains 8 poems, all of which were subsequently published in ''King Log''. * ''King Log''. London: Andre Deutsch,1968. * ''Mercian Hymns''. London: Andre Deutsch, 1971. * ''Tenebrae''. London: Andre Deutsch, 1978, * ''The Mystery of the Charity of Charles Péguy''. London: Agenda Editions /Andre Deutsch, 1983. * ''Canaan''. London: Penguin, 1996. * ''The Triumph of Love''. London: Penguin, 1997. * ''Speech! Speech!'' Washington, DC: Counterpoint, 2000. Long poem, comprising 120 12-line stanzas * ''The Orchards of Syon''. Washington DC: Counterpoint, 2002. * ''Scenes from Comus''. London: Penguin, 2005. * ''A Treatise of Civil Power''. Thame: Clutag Press, 2005. Limited edition of 400 copies. * '' Without Title''. London: Penguin, 2006. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007, . * ''A Treatise of Civil Power'' (London:
Penguin Penguins are a group of aquatic flightless birds from the family Spheniscidae () of the order Sphenisciformes (). They live almost exclusively in the Southern Hemisphere. Only one species, the Galápagos penguin, is equatorial, with a sm ...
, 2007. (“In Penguin’s new printing, a number of the book’s other poems survive intact, but the "Treatise" has been smashed up, rewritten (or sub-edited) into a number of smaller poems and fragmentary lyrics. Then other stuff’s gone in as well.” Tim Martin, ''The Guardian'' (8 Sept. 2007) * ''Oraclau , Oracles: The Daybooks III''. Thame: Clutag Press, 2010. * ''Clavics: The Daybooks IV''. London: Enitharmon Press, 2011.Enitharmon Press
* ''Odi Barbare: The Daybooks II''. Thame: Clutag Press, 2012. * (Posthumous)


Poetry collections and selections

*''Somewhere Is Such a Kingdom: Poems 1952-1971'', introduction by Harold Bloom. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1975. (Contains ''For the Unfallen'' (1959), ''King Log'' (1968), ''Mercian Hymns'' (1971) *Edwin Brock /Geoffrey Hill /Stevie Smith. Penguin Modern Poets, 8. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1966 *''Collected Poems''. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1985. 1st hardback edition, London: André Deutsch, 1986. *''New & Collected Poems, 1952-1992. '' Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1994. *''Selected Poems.'' Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2006. 1st hardback edition, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010. Published 1 April. *''Broken Hierarchies: Poems 1952-2012'', ed. Kenneth Haynes''.'' Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013.  Published November. Includes all published collections, and four hitherto unpublished sections of “The Daybooks”: a) Ludo: Epigraphs and Colophons to ''The Daybooks'', b) I.  Expostulations on the Volcano, c) II.  Liber Illustrium Virorum, d) VI.  Al Tempo de’ Tremuoti


Prose and drama

* Brand, by Henrik Ibsen: A Version for the English Stage, trans. Geoffrey Hill. 1978. * ''The Lords of Limit: Essays on Literature and Ideas''. London: Andre Deutsch, 1984. * ''The Enemy's Country: Words, Contexture, and other Circumstances of Language.'' Stanford University Press, 1991. * ''Style and Faith'' (2003) * ''Collected Critical Writings'', ed. Kenneth Haynes. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008


Notes


Further reading

* * * * *


External links


Oxford Professor of Poetry Faculty Page featuring Hill's Lectures
* *

''Selected Poems'' in ''The Critical Flame''.
Profile at Poets.org

Profile and poems at Poetry Foundation


celebrating his 70th birthday
BBC 18 June 2010 "Geoffrey Hill named Oxford poetry professor"



'Subduing the reader'
by Laurie Smith in ''Magma'', No. 23, Summer 2002 * , review of ''The Orchards of Syon'' in the '' Oxonian Review''
'The Violent Bear it Away'
Audio recording of a lecture on English translations of the Bible given at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge. * Archival material at {{DEFAULTSORT:Hill, Geoffrey People from Bromsgrove People from Bromsgrove District Formalist poets Alumni of Keble College, Oxford Fellows of Keble College, Oxford Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Fellows of the Royal Society of Literature Fellows of Emmanuel College, Cambridge 1932 births 2016 deaths Knights Bachelor Academics of the University of Leeds Oxford Professors of Poetry English male poets 20th-century English poets 21st-century English poets 21st-century English male writers 20th-century English male writers Writers from Worcestershire