Tomlinson, Charles

Charles Tomlinson, in full Alfred Charles Tomlinson, (born January 8, 1927, Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire, England—died August 22, 2015, Gloucestershire, England), English poet whose best work expresses his perceptions of the world with clarity and sensitivity.

After Tomlinson graduated (1948) from Queens’ College, Cambridge, where he studied under the poet Donald Alfred Davie, he traveled extensively, especially in Italy and in the United States. He was a visiting professor at the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, and a professor in literature at Colgate University, Hamilton, New York. However, he spent much of his academic career as a lecturer (1957–68), reader (1968–82), and professor (1982–92) of English poetry at the University of Bristol in England.

Less concerned with people and emotions than with the outside world, Tomlinson’s poetry has much in common with that of the American poets Wallace Stevens and Marianne Moore. His early published poetry includes Relations and Contraries (1951) and The Necklace (1955; rev. ed. 1966). Seeing Is Believing (1958), A Peopled Landscape (1963), and American Scenes (1966) capture the haunting atmosphere of ghost towns in the desert. Other works include The Poem as Initiation (1968), America West Southwest (1969), Selected Poems, 1955–1997 (1997), Skywriting (2003), Cracks in the Universe (2006), and New Collected Poems (2009).

With Octavio Paz, Tomlinson wrote Air Born/Hijos del aire (1979), a bilingual English-Spanish volume for which each translated the other’s poems. Other verse translations (in collaboration with Henry Gifford) include Versions from Fyodor Tyutchev (1960), Castilian Ilexes: Versions from Antonio Machado (1963), and Ten Versions from Trilce (1970), from the work of César Vallejo. In addition, Tomlinson edited The Oxford Book of Verse in English Translation (1980) as well as collections by Moore and William Carlos Williams. His nonfiction work includes Some Americans: A Personal Record (1981) and Poetry and Metamorphosis (1983).

Tomlinson was named to the Royal Society of Literature in 1974 and was made Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 2001.