John Thompson (poet)
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John Thompson (March 17, 1938 – April 26, 1976) was an influential Canadian poet.
Born in Timperley, Cheshire, England, his father was killed in the Second World War. He was educated at Sheffield University, and received a PhD from Michigan State University in 1966. That same year he began teaching at Mount Allison University in Sackville, New Brunswick, Canada, where he lived in a farmhouse at Wood Point overlooking the Tantramar Marshes. His first collection, At the Edge of the Chopping there are no Secrets (1973), received mixed reviews. This was followed by a divorce and a fire that consumed his home and most of his manuscripts. Thompson died shortly after completing his second and final collection, Stilt Jack (1978), which included his own poems and translations. Writing in 1998 in The Danforth Review, Dan Reve wrote, "[The ghazal] is a rarefied, peculiar and therefore powerful form, yet limited. John Thompson is to be credited with the introduction and dissemination of the ghazal in Canada. His "Stilt Jack" is one of literature's odd, incommensurable works of genius."[1]
In the fall of 1975, Thompson wrote his will. When a friend visited him for Christmas, he broke down and was hospitalized for three months. On his release, instead of abiding by the doctor's orders not to mix drugs and alcohol, he continued drinking steadily. He finished Stilt Jack in April. On April 24, he gave the manuscript to his friend and fellow poet, Douglas Lochhead. After returning home, the tenants in the apartment below heard muffled choking and cries. He was discovered comatose-and pronounced dead on arrival at the hospital. James Polk describes the cause of death as "a brutal mix of barbiturates and liquor". The autopsy did not provide conclusive evidence that Thompson killed himself.
[edit] Bibliography
- At the Edge of the Chopping there are No Secrets (1973)
- Stilt Jack (1978)
- John Thompson: Collected Poems and Translations, edited by Peter Sanger (Goose Lane Editions, 1995)
- I Dream Myself Into Being: Collected Poems, foreword by James Polk (Anansi, 1991, reissued in 2006)
