Moore, Nicholas

(1918-1986)

   Born in Cambridge, the son of George Edward Moore 1873-1958, Cambridge philosopher, he studied classics at St. Andrews University and Trinity College, Cambridge. Most of his verse was published during World War II, in which he was a conscientious objector. He is one of the "New Apocalypse" English poets of the 1940s who reacted against the preoccupation with social and political issues of the 1930s by turning toward romanticism. The Glass Tower, a selected poems collection from 1944, appeared with illustrations by Lucien Freud. He edited poetry magazines in London, then in the 1950s, experiencing difficulty getting published, dropped out for a while. He turned his attention to horticulture and published a gardening book, The Tall Bearded Iris (1956). In 1968 he entered a competition for the Sunday Times with 31 different translations of Baudelaire's poem Paris Spleen. The resulting book, Spleen, is available online. Some of his poems: "Act of Love," "Alcestis in Ely," "Fred Apollus at Fava's," "Ideas of Disorder at Torquay," "Incidents in Playfair House," "The Hair's-Breadth," "The Island and the Cattle," "The Phallic Symbol," "Winter and Red Berries."

   Sources: Antholog y of Twentieth-Century British and Irish Poetry. Keith Tuma, ed. Oxford University Press, 2001. Encyclopædia Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite DVD, 2006. Erotic Poetry: The Lyrics, Ballads, Idylls, and Epics of Love - Classical to Contemporary. William Cole, ed. Random House, 1963. The New British Poets: An Antholog y. Kenneth Rexroth, ed. New Directions, 1949. The Poetry Antholog y, 1912-1977. Daryl Hine, and Joseph Parisi, ed. Houghton Mifflin, 1978. Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia).