Turnbull, Gael

(1928-2004)

   Born in Edinburgh, he was brought up in Jarrow, County Durham, and Blackpool, and on the outbreak of World War II the family emigrated to Winnipeg. He studied natural science at Christ's College, Cambridge University, and graduated in medicine from the University of Pennsylvania in 1951, after which he specialized in anesthesiology. After retiring from medical practice Turnbull moved to Edinburgh, where he continued to write poems of all shapes and sizes. He died on a visit to Herefordshire, of a brain hemorrhage, and a memorial "Gathering for Gael" was held in Greyfriars Kirk, Edinburgh. In 1957 he founded Migrant Press, an important British-based small publisher. He was truly a Transatlantic poet who forged links with French-speaking Canadian poets, Black Mountain poets, Beat poets, concrete poets, and exiled Scottish and English poets. Some of his publications: A Gathering of Poems, 1950-1980, 1983. A Trampoline: Poems 1952-1964, 1968. Transmutations, 1997. A Rattle of Scree, 1997. Might a Shape of Words, 2000. Some of his poems: "George Fox, from His Journals," "Residues: Thronging the Heart," "There Are Words," "They Have Taken," "Thighs Gripping," "Twenty Words, Twenty Days."

   Sources: Antholog y of Twentieth-Century British and Irish Poetry. Keith Tuma, ed. Oxford University Press, 2001. Laurie Duggan, Recollections of the Lakes and the Lake Poets: Gael Turnbull (http://jacketmagazine.com/25/turnbdugg.html). Obituary of Gael Turnbull: John Lucas, Monday July 12, 2004, the Guardian (http://books.guardian.co.uk/obituaries/story/0,11617,1258918,00.html). Other: British and Irish Poetry Since 1970. Richard Caddel and Peter Quartermain. eds. Wesleyan University Press, 1999. 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 Scottish Poetry Library, Gael Turnbull (http://www.spl.org.uk/news/2004_0707.html). The Scottish Poetry Library (http://www.spl.org.uk/poets_a-z/turnbull.html). The New British Poetry, 1968-88. Gillian Allnutt, Fred D'Aguiar and Ken Edwards, eds. Grafton Books, 1989. Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia).