Barker, George Granville

(1913-1991)

   Poet, novelist and artist, Barker was born in Loughton, Essex, England, of Irish and English parentage. At the age of twenty he published the novel Alanna Autumnal, and Thirty Preliminary Poems. He was visiting professor of English literature at the Imperial Tohoku University in Japan in 1939 and taught in several American universities. He lived in Rome from 1960 to 1965 and settled at Bintry House in Norfolk, England, where he lived with his novelist wife Elspeth Barker. Elizabeth Smart's famous prose poem "By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept" was inspired by her affair with Barker. In her semi-autobiographical novel Come and Tell me Some Lies, Raffaella Barker (his daughter) writes about the chaotic life at Bintry House. His poems include "Sonnet to My Mother;" in spite of all her failings he still loves his mother. Some of his other poems: "Circular from America," "Grandfather, Grandfather," "January Jumps About," "Summer Song," "True Confession."

   Sources: Encyclopædia Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite DVD, 2006. Poets' Graves, George Barker (www.poetsgraves.co.uk/barker.htm). 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 Life and Work of George Barker: Poets' Graves (www.poetsgraves.co.uk/barker.htm). The National Portrait Gallery (www.npg.org.uk). The Oxford Book of Sonnets. John Fuller, ed. Oxford University Press, 2000. The Oxford Companion to English Literature. 6th edition. Margaret Drabble, ed. Oxford University Press, 2000.