Vernon Scannell

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Vernon Scannell (born 1922) is a British poet and author. He was at one time a professional boxer, and has written novels about boxing.

He was born in Spilsby, Lincolnshire, and brought up principally in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire. He left school at 14.

During World War II he served in the British Army in the Gordon Highlanders, in France and North Africa. He was imprisoned for desertion, took part in the Normandy landings and was wounded, and once more deserted after VE Day. He wrote about these experiences in An Argument of Kings (1987).

He subsequently worked as a boxer, and later studied at the University of Leeds, encountering Bonamy Dobrée and G. Wilson Knight. He was arrested as a deserter in 1947, and sent to a mental hospital. He returned to Leeds in 1948, and put together a first poetry collection, published by the Fortune Press. He subsequently worked as teacher and for BBC Radio, while developing his range as a writer.

[edit] Works

Graves and Resurrections (1948) poems
The Fight (1953) novel
The Wound and The Scar (1953)
A Mortal Pitch (1957) poems
The Big Chance (1960) novel
The Masks of Love (1960) poems
The Face of the Enemy (1961) novel
The Shadowed Place (1961) novel
A Sense of Danger (1962) poems
New Poems 1962 : A P. E. N. Anthology of Contemporary Poetry (1962) editor with Patricia Beer and Ted Hughes
The Dividing Night (1962)
Edward Thomas (1963)
The Big Time (1965) novel
The Loving Game (1965) poems
Walking Wounded - Poems 1962-65 (1965)
Pergamon Poets 8 (1970) with Jon Silkin
Epithets of War - Poems 1965-69 (1969)
The Dangerous Ones (1970)
Mastering the Craft (1970)
Selected Poems (1971)
Company of Women (c. 1971)
The Tiger and the Rose (1971) autobiography (i)
Incident at West Bay, a poem (1972)
The Winter Man (1973)
Wish You Were Here (1973) broadsheet poem
Meeting in Manchester (1974)
The Apple-Raid (1974) poems
Three Poets, Two Children: Leonard Clark, Vernon Scannell, Dannie Abse, Answer Questions by Two Children (1975)
A Morden Tower Reading (1976) poems, with Alexis Lykiard
Not Without Glory: Poets of the Second World War (1976) editor
A Proper Gentleman (1977) autobiography (ii)
Of Love And Music (1979)
A Lonely Game (1979)
New & Collected Poems 1950-1980 (1980)
Catch the Light (1982) poems, with Gregory Harrison and Lawrence Smith
Winterlude (1982) poems
How To Enjoy Poetry (1983)
Ring of Truth (1983) novel
How to Enjoy Novels (1984)
An Argument of Kings (1987) autobiographical, World War II
Funeral Games And Other Poems (1987)
Sporting Literature (1987) editor, anthology
The Clever Potato A Feast of Poetry for Children (1988)
Soldiering On. Poems of Military Life (1989) poems
Love Shouts and Whispers (1990)
A Time for Fires (1991) poems
Travelling Light (1991)
Drums of Morning - Growing up in the Thirties (1992) autobiography (iii)
The Black and White Days (1996) poems
Collected Poems, 1950-93 (1998)
Feminine Endings (Enitharmon Press 2000) poems
Views and Distances (Enitharmon Press 2000) poems
Of Love & War (2002)
Incendiary
House for sale
Moods of rain
Nettles