For the British aeronautical engineer and professor, see Geoffrey T. R. HillProfessor Geoffrey T.R. Hill MC, M.Sc, M.I.Mech.E., FRAeS, was a British aeronautical engineer.He was a pilot with No. 29 Squadron RFC and later a test pilot during the First World War as was his brother...
Geoffrey Hill (born 18 June 1932) is an
EnglishThe English are a nation and ethnic group native to England, who speak English. The English identity as a people is of early medieval origin, when they were known in Old English as the Anglecynn....
poetA poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...
, professor emeritus of
English literatureEnglish literature is the literature written in the English language, including literature composed in English by writers not necessarily from England; Joseph Conrad was born in Poland, Robert Burns was Scottish, James Joyce was Irish, Dylan Thomas was Welsh, Edgar Allan Poe was American, V.S....
and
religionA religion is a system of human thought which usually includes a set of narratives, symbols, beliefs and practices that give meaning to the practitioner's experiences of life through reference to a higher power, deity or deities, or ultimate truth...
, and former co-director of the
Editorial InstituteThe Editorial Institute at Boston University was founded in 2000 by Christopher Ricks and Geoffrey Hill with "the conviction that the textually sound, contextually annotated edition is central to the intellectual life of many disciplines." The primary aims of the Institute are to promote critical...
, at
Boston UniversityBoston University is a private nonsectarian university located in Boston, Massachusetts, United States. Although chartered by the Massachusetts Legislature in 1869, Boston University traces its roots to the establishment of the Newbury Biblical Institute in Newbury, Vermont in 1839...
.
Geoffrey Hill was born in
BromsgroveBromsgrove is a town in Worcestershire, England. The town is about north east of Worcester and south west of Birmingham city centre. It had a population of 29,237 in 2001 and is in Bromsgrove District....
,
WorcestershireWorcestershire or ; abbreviated Worcs) is a historic and administrative county located in the West Midlands region of central England. In 1974 it was merged with the county of Herefordshire to form the single administrative county of Hereford and Worcester; which was divided in 1998,...
,
EnglandEngland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west and the North Sea to the east, with the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
, in 1932. When he was six, his family moved to nearby Fairfield in Worcestershire, where he attended the local primary school, then the grammar school in Bromsgrove.
For the British aeronautical engineer and professor, see Geoffrey T. R. HillProfessor Geoffrey T.R. Hill MC, M.Sc, M.I.Mech.E., FRAeS, was a British aeronautical engineer.He was a pilot with No. 29 Squadron RFC and later a test pilot during the First World War as was his brother...
Geoffrey Hill (born 18 June 1932) is an
EnglishThe English are a nation and ethnic group native to England, who speak English. The English identity as a people is of early medieval origin, when they were known in Old English as the Anglecynn....
poetA poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...
, professor emeritus of
English literatureEnglish literature is the literature written in the English language, including literature composed in English by writers not necessarily from England; Joseph Conrad was born in Poland, Robert Burns was Scottish, James Joyce was Irish, Dylan Thomas was Welsh, Edgar Allan Poe was American, V.S....
and
religionA religion is a system of human thought which usually includes a set of narratives, symbols, beliefs and practices that give meaning to the practitioner's experiences of life through reference to a higher power, deity or deities, or ultimate truth...
, and former co-director of the
Editorial InstituteThe Editorial Institute at Boston University was founded in 2000 by Christopher Ricks and Geoffrey Hill with "the conviction that the textually sound, contextually annotated edition is central to the intellectual life of many disciplines." The primary aims of the Institute are to promote critical...
, at
Boston UniversityBoston University is a private nonsectarian university located in Boston, Massachusetts, United States. Although chartered by the Massachusetts Legislature in 1869, Boston University traces its roots to the establishment of the Newbury Biblical Institute in Newbury, Vermont in 1839...
.
Biography
Geoffrey Hill was born in
BromsgroveBromsgrove is a town in Worcestershire, England. The town is about north east of Worcester and south west of Birmingham city centre. It had a population of 29,237 in 2001 and is in Bromsgrove District....
,
WorcestershireWorcestershire or ; abbreviated Worcs) is a historic and administrative county located in the West Midlands region of central England. In 1974 it was merged with the county of Herefordshire to form the single administrative county of Hereford and Worcester; which was divided in 1998,...
,
EnglandEngland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west and the North Sea to the east, with the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
, in 1932. When he was six, his family moved to nearby Fairfield in Worcestershire, where he attended the local primary school, then the grammar school in Bromsgrove. In 1950 he was admitted to
Keble College, OxfordKeble College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. Its main buildings are on Parks Road, opposite the University Museum and the University Parks. The college is bordered to the north by Keble Road, to the south by Museum Road, and to the west by Blackhall...
to read English, where he published his first poems in 1952, at the age of twenty, in an eponymous
Fantasy PressFantasy Press was an American publishing house specialising in fantasy and science fiction titles. Established in 1946 by Lloyd Arthur Eshbach in Reading, Pennsylvania, it was most notable for publishing the works of authors such as Robert A. Heinlein and E. E. Smith...
volume (though he had published work in the
Oxford Guardian—the magazine of the University Liberal Club—and
The IsisThe Isis Magazine is the longest-running independent student magazine in England. It was established at Oxford University in 1892 . Traditionally a rival to the student newspaper Cherwell, it was finally acquired by the latter's parent company, OSPL, in the late 1990s.In its long history Isis has...
).
Upon graduation from
OxfordThe University of Oxford , located in the UK city of Oxford, is the oldest surviving university in the English-speaking world and is regarded as one of the world's leading academic institutions. Although the exact date of foundation remains unclear, there is evidence of teaching there as far back...
with a
firstThe British undergraduate degree classification system is a grading scheme for undergraduate degrees in the United Kingdom...
, Hill embarked on an academic career, teaching at the
University of LeedsThe University of Leeds is a major teaching and research university in Leeds, West Yorkshire and, with over 33,000 full-time students, is the second largest single site university in the United Kingdom. In the world university league tables published in November 2008, the university's ‘employer...
from 1954 until 1980. After leaving Leeds, he spent a year at the
University of BristolThe University of Bristol is a university in Bristol, England. One of the so-called "red brick" universities, it received its Royal Charter in 1909, although its predecessor institution, University College, Bristol, had been in existence since 1876...
on a Churchill Scholarship before becoming a teaching Fellow at
Emmanuel College, CambridgeEmmanuel College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge.The college was founded in 1584 by Sir Walter Mildmay on the site of a Dominican friary...
, where he taught from 1981 until 1988. He then moved to the
United StatesThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, to serve as
University ProfessorThe University Professors Program is a college within Boston University that grants degrees in fields that combine, bridge, or fall between established intellectual disciplines...
and Professor of Literature and Religion at Boston University. In 2006, he moved back to Cambridge, England.
Professor Hill was awarded an honorary DLitt from the University of Leeds in 1988. He is also Honorary Fellow of Keble College, Oxford; Honorary Fellow of
Emmanuel College, CambridgeEmmanuel College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge.The college was founded in 1584 by Sir Walter Mildmay on the site of a Dominican friary...
; Fellow of the
Royal Society of LiteratureThe Royal Society of Literature is the "senior literary organisation in Britain". It was founded in 1820 by King George IV, in order to "reward literary merit and excite literary talent". The Society's first president was Thomas Burgess, who later became the Bishop of Salisbury...
; and since 1996 a Fellow of the
American Academy of Arts and SciencesThe American Academy of Arts and Sciences is an independent policy research center that conducts multidisciplinary studies of complex and emerging problems. The Academy’s elected members are leaders in the academic disciplines, the arts, business, and public affairs.James Bowdoin, John Adams, and...
. In 2009 his
Collected Critical Writings won the
Truman Capote Award for Literary CriticismThe Truman Capote Award for Literary Criticism is awarded for literary criticism by the University of Iowa on behalf of the Truman Capote Estate. The value of the award is $30,000 , and is said to be the largest annual cash prize for literary criticism in the English language...
, the largest annual cash prize in English-language literary criticism.
Hill is married to
Alice GoodmanAlice Goodman , American poet, was educated at Harvard University and Cambridge where she studied English and American literature. She has written the libretti for two of the operas of John Adams, Nixon in China and The Death of Klinghoffer. She was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, and attended and...
, and they have one daughter.
Writing
Hill has been considered to be among the most distinguished poets of his generation. Hill's poetry encompasses a variety of styles, from the dense and allusive writing of
King Log (1968) and
Canaan (1997) to the simplified syntax of the sequence 'The Pentecost Castle' in
Tenebrae (1978) to the more accessible poems of
Mercian Hymns (1971), a series of thirty poems (sometimes called 'prose-poems' a label which Hill rejects in favour of 'versets') which juxtapose the history of
OffaOffa was the King of Mercia from 757 until his death in July 796. He was the son of Thingfrith and a descendant of Eowa, a brother of King Penda of Mercia, who had ruled over a century before. Offa came to the throne after a period of civil war following the assassination of Æthelbald, defeating...
, eighth century ruler of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of
MerciaMercia was one of the kingdoms of the Anglo-Saxon Heptarchy. It was centred on the valley of the River Trent and its tributaries in the region now known as the English Midlands...
, with Hill's own childhood in the modern Mercia of the
West MidlandsThe West Midlands is an official region of England, covering the western half of the area traditionally known as the Midlands. It contains the second most populous British city, Birmingham, and the larger West Midlands conurbation, which includes the city of Wolverhampton and large towns of Dudley,...
. Hill has also worked in related fields - in 1978, the
Royal National TheatreThe Royal National Theatre in London is one of the United Kingdom's two most prominent publicly funded theatre companies, alongside the Royal Shakespeare Company....
in
London[]London is the capital of England and the United Kingdom. It has been a major settlement for two millennia, and the history of London goes back to its founding by the Romans, when it was named Londinium. London's core, the ancient City of London, the 'square mile', retains its medieval boundaries...
staged his 'version for the English stage' of
BrandBrand is a play by the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. It is a verse tragedy, written in 1865 and first performed in Stockholm on 24 March 1867. Brand was an intellectual play that caused many people to "think outside the box"....
by Henrick Ibsen, written in rhyming verse.
Regarding both his style and subject, Hill is often described as a "difficult" poet. He makes circumspect use of traditional rhetoric (as well as that of modernism), but he also transcribes the idioms of public life, such as those of television, political sloganeering, and punditry. Hill has been consistently drawn to morally problematic and violent episodes in British and European history, though it should be noted that his accounts of landscape (especially that of his native Worcestershire) are as intense as his encounters with history. (He has written perhaps the most important poetic responses to the Holocaust in English, 'Two Formal Elegies', 'September Song' and 'Ovid in the Third Reich'.) In an interview in
The Paris Review (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 also argued that to be difficult is to be democratic, equating the demand for simplicity with the demands of tyrants.
Hill's distaste for conclusion, however, has led him, in 2000's
Speech! Speech! (118), to scorn the latter argument as a glib get-out: '
ACCESSIBLE / traded as
DEMOCRATIC, he answers / as he answers móst things these days | easily.' Indeed, throughout his corpus it is impressed upon the reader that Hill, a palpably gifted lyrist, is uncomfortable with the muffling and fudges of truth-telling that verse designed to sound well, for its contrivances of harmony, must permit. The constant buffets of Hill's suspicion or scrupulous wariness of lyric eloquence—can it truly
be eloquent?—against his powerful 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 ones of prose-like academese and inscrutable syntax. Such subtle unrest ends up dramatising Hill's real condition (of which we learn in the long interview collected in
HaffendenProfessor John Haffenden is an academic in the field of Literature at the University of Sheffield.-Education and positions held:He was educated at Trinity College, Dublin , where he edited Icarus, and Oxford University . He has spent periods as a Fellow of the Yaddo Foundation, New York; as a...
's
Viewpoints): that of the poet warring himself to witness honestly, to make language, that tool for whose lyric use his aptitude may be unfortunate, say truly what he believes is true of the world.
Controversy, Explanation and Parody
The violence of Hill's aesthetic has been criticised by the Irish poet-critic
Tom PaulinThomas Neilson Paulin is a Northern Irish poet and critic of film, music and literature. He lives in England, where he is the GM Young Lecturer in English Literature at Hertford College, Oxford.- Life and work :...
, who draws attention to the poet's use of the
VirgilPublius Vergilius Maro was a classical Roman poet, best known for three major works—the Eclogues , the Georgics, and the Aeneid—although several minor poems are also attributed to him.The son of a farmer, Virgil came to be...
ian trope of 'rivers of blood' – as deployed infamously by
Enoch PowellJohn Enoch Powell, MBE was a British politician, linguist, writer, academic, soldier and poet.He was a Conservative Party Member of Parliament between 1950 and February 1974, and an Ulster Unionist MP between October 1974 and 1987. He was controversial through most of his career, and his tenure...
– to suggest that despite Hill's multi-layered irony and techniques of reflection, his lyrics often seem to 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'. And yet Hill's worldwide reputation exceeds that of any other living British poet;
Harold BloomHarold Bloom is an American writer and literary critic, currently Sterling Professor of the Humanities at Yale University...
has called him 'the strongest British poet now active.' For his part, Hill very ably addressed some of the misperceptions about his political and cultural beliefs in a
GuardianThe Guardian is a British daily newspaper owned by the Guardian Media Group. Founded in 1821, it is unique among major British newspapers in being owned by a foundation .The Guardian Weekly, which circulates worldwide, provides a compact digest of four newspapers...
interview in 2002. Therein he suggests that his affection for the "radical Red Torys" 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 unmistakable style has also been subject to parody:
Wendy CopeWendy Cope is an award-winning contemporary English poet. She read history at St Hilda's College, Oxford. She now lives in Winchester with the poet Lachlan Mackinnon.-Biography:...
includes a parody of a 'Mercian Hymn' in
Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis.
Poetry
- For the Unfallen (1958)
- King Log (1968)
- Mercian Hymns (1971) winner of the Alice Hunt Bartlett Prize
The Alice Hunt Bartlett Prize is awarded by the Poetry Society of London for a collection of poetry.-Past winners:* 1966: Gavin Bantock for Christ: A Poem in 26 parts and Paul Roche for All Things Considered...
- Tenebrae (1978)
- The Mystery of the Charity of Charles Péguy (1983)
- New and Collected Poems (1994)
- Canaan (1997)
- The Triumph of Love (1998)
- Speech! Speech! (2000)
- The Orchards of Syon (2002)
- Scenes from Comus (2005)
- Without Title
Without Title is a book of poems by Geoffrey Hill. It was published by Penguin in 2006 .The first book of the Hill's late writing period ....
(2006)
- Selected Poems (2006)
- A Treatise of Civil Power (Clutag Press
The Clutag Press was established in 2000 as a venture by Andrew McNeillie to issue Clutag Poetry Leaflets, by established and emerging poets. In 2004, it received backing from The Christopher Tower Fund...
, 2005)
- A Treatise of Civil Power (Penguin
Penguin Books is a publisher founded in 1935 by Allen Lane. Lane's idea was to provide quality writing cheaply, for the same price as a packet of cigarettes. He also wanted them to be sold not only in bookshops but in railway stations, general stores and corner shops. Its most emblematic products...
, 2007)
Essays
- The Lords of Limit (1984)
- The Enemy's Country (1991)
- Style and Faith (2003)
- Collected Critical Writings (2008)
External links