Tessimond, Arthur Seymour John

(1902-1962)

   Born in Birkenhead, Cheshire, and educated at Charterhouse School and Liverpool University, he worked in bookshops in London and then as an advertising copywriter. He was found to be medically unfit for service in World War II. He suffered from depression (for which he received electric shock treatment) and he spent a great deal of money on psychoanalysis. He died of a brain hemorrhage. Stylistically he was of the Imagist School, and his poems are about the ordinary and city stereotypes; some are conversation poems, often with a tendency toward the melancholic. Walls of Glass (1934), Voices in a Giant City (1947), and Selections (1958) were published during his lifetime. Not Love Perhaps was published in 1972. In the mid-1970s he was the subject of a radio program entitled Portrait of a Romantic. His Daydream and Voices in a Giant City were featured in 2004 on BBC Radio 4's program Poetry Please. Some of his poems: "Cats," "Daydream," "Middle-aged Conversation," "Not Love Perhaps," "Postscript to a Pettiness," "The British," "The Children Look at the Parents."

   Sources: Cats, Poem by A.S.J. Tessimond (http://www.cs.rice.edu/Tessimond, Arthur Seymour Johnssiyer/minstrels/poems/1010.html). Poemhunter (www.poemhunter.com). Biography of A.S.J. Tessiond, and List of Poems (http://www.poetryconnection.net/poets/A.S.J._Tessimond). Seven Centuries of Poetry: Chaucer to Dylan Thomas. A.N. Jeffares, ed. Longmans, Green, 1955. The Chatto Book of Modern Poetry 1915-1955. Cecil Day Lewis and John Lehmann, eds. Chatto and Windus, 1966. The Columbia Granger's Index to Poetry. 11th ed. The Columbia Granger's World of Poetry, Columbia University Press, 2005 (http://www.columbiagrangers.org). The Oxford Book of Animal Poems. Michael Harrison and Christopher Stuart-Clark, ed. Oxford University Press, 1992. The Oxford Companion to English Literature. 6th edition. Margaret Drabble, ed. Oxford University Press, 2000. Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia).