Among the papers of the Bloodaxe Books poetry archive at Newcastle University is a slim green folder containing two letters sent to Neil Astley from the famous British poet Thom Gunn (1929-2004). Gunn, who has been described as the most exciting poet of his generation, is well known for the extraordinary formal prowess of his poems, the fierce intellectual compassion of his thinking, and the ‘Cool Queer Life’ (as Gunn’s biographer Michael Nott puts it) that he led in America.
The first of Gunn’s letters to Astley in the Bloodaxe Books Archive is written by hand; the second is typed. In the first letter, dated 18 March 1981, Thom Gunn expresses an interest in buying a recording of Basil Bunting reading Briggflatts, and asks how much he should send in dollars. The address in the top right-hand corner is ‘1216 Cole Street, San Francisco’. It’s an evocative address, calling up a place very different to the quiet, controlled surroundings of the Special Collections Reading Room in Newcastle University Library. As his obituary in The Times explained, Gunn shared his flat in the Haight Ashbury district with his life partner Mike Kitay,
“two other men and some cats – its front room decorated with 1950s soft drink posters and a working Wurlitzer juke box.”
I wonder did Gunn play the Briggflatts record on that same juke box, with Bunting’s ‘larks’ and ‘becks’ momentarily filling the San Francisco room?
In Gunn’s second letter, dated 26 June of the same year, Gunn thanks Astley for sending a parcel of Bloodaxe poetry pamphlets. He singles out Ken Smith’s Fox Running, saying that of the seven he received, this was the pamphlet which most interested him.
“One thing I like about it is the way he is able to get so much in. Wish I could do that.”
The letter continues:
“Meanwhile, the Bunting records arrived in Berkley and I have duly been able to purchase one. It was certainly worth waiting for.”
It’s fascinating how these letters show Gunn’s considerable appreciation for both new and established poets. And for anyone visiting the archive in person, there is the strange reality of handling the physical object itself: the page that Gunn held and wrote on, while working in his sunny Californian flat. Although this letter is typed, its corrections and insertions are made by hand, providing a tangible reminder of how poets were writing on typewriters, before the common availability of word-processors and computers. There is an immediacy to these ordinary-yet-precious documents. Reading Gunn’s words, we are transported to another time for a moment, and the poet becomes briefly alive once more in our imaginations.
Written by Tara Bergin
View the material in our Bloodaxe Books Archive, reference BXB5/2/1.