Keith Bosley

Keith Anthony Bosley (16 September 1937 – 24 June 2018) was a British poet, translator, and radio broadcaster. Born in Bourne End, Buckinghamshire, he studied French at university before starting his career at the BBC, where he worked primarily as a newsreader. Although he published three volumes of original poetry, Bosley is best known for his work as a translator. A polyglot, he claimed to have translated poetry to English from up to forty languages, and had published collections translated from Finnish, French, Portuguese, Hebrew, Vietnamese, Polish, Russian, and German.

Career Keith Anthony Bosley was born in Bourne End, Buckinghamshire on 16 September 1937. His father was a signalman, and worked on nearby rail-lines. Growing up and beginning school in Maidenhead, Berkshire, he later attended Sir William Borlase's Grammar School in Marlow. From 1956, Bosley studied French at the University of Reading under Michael Hamburger, continuing at Sorbonne University and the University of Caen Normandy; he graduated in 1960.

Finishing university, Bosley started work with the BBC in 1961, as an announcer and newsreader for the World Service at Bush House. There, he wrote many scripts, some comprising series on poetry and literature to be read himself, and also delivered announcements to open and close programmes including "From Our Own Correspondent". Bosley did shift work with the BBC, working both day and night shifts: this allowed him to spend some time at work translating. Bosley has been praised for his voice, being described as having a "distinctive, resonant and musical voice, much admired by his devoted followers all over the world"; concerning his audio-book work, Finnish folklorist wrote of his "practised enunciation [as] beautiful and clear." His career spanned over 30 years with the Corporation: he retired in 1993. In addition to the Kalevala, Bosley also rendered much of the Kanteletar, another less widely-known collection of Finnish verse by Lönnrot, into English. Here, he was the first to do so, publishing in 1992. A year later, he again worked with Branch, alongside Lauri Honko and Senni Timonen, to produce a large work of poetry from across the Finno-Ugric peoples and languages: this comprised over 30 poets, 450 poems, and 13 languages, including Veps, Mordvin, Udmurt, and Livonian.

Personal life

Bosley was first married to vocalist Helen Sava, and with her had one son. In 1982, several years after concluding his partnership with Sava, he married harpist Satu Salo, and with her had two sons. Bosley played the pipe organ and piano, particularly enjoying the works of Johann Sebastian Bach.

On 24 June, 2018, Bosley died in a nursing home in Slough, aged 80, after a short illness. In the United Kingdom, Bosley won prizes in competitions held by the English Goethe Society and British Comparative Literature Association.

Translations Russia's Other Poets (1968) An Idiom of Night: Pierre Jean Jouve (1968) The War Wife: Vietnamese poetry (1972) The Song of Songs (1976) Finnish Folk Poetry: Epic (1977) Mallarmé: The Poems (1977) A Round O: André Frénaud (1977) The Last Temptations: opera by Joonas Kokkonen (1977) Whitsongs: Eino Leino (1978) The Elek Book of Oriental Verse (1979) A Reading of Ashes: Jerzy Ficowski (1981) From the Theorems of Master Jean de La Ceppède (1983) The Kalevala (1989) Luís de Camões: Epic and Lyric (1990) The Kanteletar: selection (1992) The Great Bear: Finno-Ugrian oral poetry (1993) Odes: Aleksis Kivi (1994) A Centenary Pessoa (1995) Rome the Sorceress: André Frénaud (1995) Eve Blossom Has Wheels: German love poetry (1997) Skating on the Sea: poetry from Finland (1997)

Audiobooks The Kalevala (2013) – an audio recording of the 1989 translation