James Kirkup

James Harold Kirkup (23 April 1918 – 10 May 2009) was an English poet, translator and travel writer. He wrote more than 45 books, including autobiographies, novels and plays. He wrote under many pen-names including James Falconer, Jun Honda, Andrew James, Taeko Kawai, Felix Liston, Edward Raeburn, and Ivy B. Summerforest. He became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1962.

Early life James Kirkup was brought up in South Shields, England, and was educated at Westoe Secondary School, and then at King's College, Durham University. During the Second World War, he was a conscientious objector, and worked for the Forestry Commission, on the land in the Yorkshire Dales and at the Lansbury Gate Farm, Clavering, Essex. He taught at The Downs School in Colwall, Malvern, where W. H. Auden had earlier been a master. Kirkup wrote his first book of poetry there; this was The Drowned Sailor, which was published in 1947.

He moved south with his partner to Gloucestershire in 1952, and became a visiting poet at Bath Academy of Art for the next three years. Moving on from Bath, Kirkup taught in a London grammar school before leaving England in 1956

Poetry After the writing of simple verses and rhymes from the age of six, and the publication of The Drowned Sailor in 1947, Kirkup's published works encompassed several dozen collections of poetry, six volumes of autobiography,

Kirkup's home town of South Shields now holds a growing collection of his works in the Central Library, and artefacts from his time in Japan are housed in the nearby Museum. His last volume of poetry was published during the summer of 2008 by Red Squirrel Press, and was launched at Central Library in South Shields.