Fisher, Roy

(1930- )

   He was born in Handsworth, Birmingham, and studied at Birmingham University. From 1963 until 1971 he was head of English and drama at Bordesley College of Education, Birmingham. He then joined the Department of American Studies at Keele University, Staffordshire, where he stayed until 1982, after which he worked as a freelance writer and musician. As a jazz pianist, he married jazz with poetry and was one of the first British poets to be associated with the Black Mountain School of jazz poetry, which started in North Carolina in the early 1950s. He was thus one of the key figures in the British Poetry Revival. Some of his publications: City, 1962 (admired in the United States but almost ignored in Britain). Poems 1955-1980, 1981. A Furnace, 1986. Poems 1955-1987, 1988. The Dow Low Drop, 1996. Some of his poems: "Commuter," "Diversions," "Five Morning Poems from a Picture by Manet," "Five Pilgrims in the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales," "Handsworth Liberties," "Inscriptions for Bluebeard's Castle," "Matrix," "Studies," "The Billiard Table," "The Open Poem and the Closed Poem."

   Sources: Biography of Roy Fisher: Literary Heritage (http://www3.shropshire-cc.gov.uk/fisher.htm). Poems, 1955-1987 of Roy Fisher. Oxford University Press, 1988. 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 Companion to English Literature. 6th edition. Margaret Drabble, ed. Oxford University Press, 2000. Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia).