Nuttall, Jeff

(1933-2004)

   Born in Clitheroe, Lancashire, he grew up in Orcop, near the Herefordshire-Welsh border, where his father was the village schoolmaster. His education was at Hereford and Bath art schools (1949-1953), where he trained as a painter and began writing poetry in 1962. From 1956 to 1968 he was a secondary school art master, then for 16 years he worked at art colleges in Bradford, Leeds, and then as Liverpool polytechnic's head of fine art. He was one of the group of "underground" writers and performers from the late 1950s to the mid-1970s. He also acted in film and television. He was chairman of the National Poetry Society in 1975 and steered it through the differences between two opposing schools of modernism and neo-Georgians. His poems reflect the influence of his involvement with jazz rhythms and with Welsh poetry. He was the Guardian's poetry critic from 1979 to 1981 and published some 40 books - poetry, plays, fiction, memoirs, essays, and verbal portraits. He lived and died in Crickhowell, Wales. Some of his poems: "Goodbye to Leeds (Regret)," "Return Trip," "Scenes and Dubs," "The Whore of Kilpeck," "Three Scenes: Todmorden."

   Sources: Bomb Culture, Jeff Nuttall. MacGibbon and Kee, 1968. Guardian Unlimited Obituary, Jeff Nuttall (http://www.guardian.co.uk/obituaries/story/0,1120760,00.html). Jeff Nuttall Selected Poems (2003). Introduction by Roy Fisher. Salt Publishing, 2003 (http://www.saltpublishing.com/books/smp/1844710130.htm). Jeff Nuttall Video Titles, Available from Movies Unlimited (http://www.movies unlimited.com/musite/findresults_actor.asp?search=Jeff+ Nuttall). Selected Poems by Jeff Nuttall (2003). Review by James Wilkes, 2004 (http://terriblework.co.uk/jeff_nuttall.htm). The New British Poetry, 1968-88. Gillian Allnutt, Fred D'Aguiar and Ken Edwards, eds. Grafton Books, 1989.