HEXHAM’S ‘PEOPLE’S POET’: Wilfrid Wilson Gibson
‘Heather land and bent-land,
Black land and white,
God bring me to Northumberland,
The land of my delight.
Land of singing waters,
And winds from off the sea,
God bring me to Northumberland,
The land where I would be.
Heather land and bent-land,
And valleys rich with corn,
God bring me to Northumberland,
The land where I was born.’
Wilfrid Gibson, author of
poems like ‘Flannan Isle’, ‘The Ice Cart’, and ‘The Drover’s Road’, was
born in Battle Hill House, Hexham, on October 2 1878, the son of a Fore
Street chemist. He grew up under the guidance of an elder sister who was
responsible for much of his education.
Not much is known about his
early years except for a distinct gift for language and a desire to be a
poet. His first published poem appeared in ‘The Specator’ in 1897 and
his first book of poetry was published at the age of 24 and entitled
‘The Golden Helm’. Similarly romantic was his next book, ‘Urlyn the
Harper’, published two years later. This was followed, in 1907, by
‘Stonefields’ which depicted the strength and atmosphere of
Northumberland and the Borders, and then ‘Daily Bread’, issued in 1910,
which went into a third printing, partly because of its down-to-earth
style proving that there was a market for poems on everyday life which
people could relate to. Gibson had ceased writing pseudo -Tennysonian
verse and had begun to write realistic poetry in which he attempted to
reflect the speech of ordinary people, based on events stemming from
everyday life in Northumberland and eleswhere.
He was also a reluctant
playwright whose verse dialogues were frequently performed. His play
‘Womankind’ was performed in Birmingham and Glasgow, as well as at the
Chicago Little Theatre. However, he lacked real dramatic gift and found
the conventions of theatre distasteful to a man who was a recluse by
temperament.
He was not without his
critics, like the poet Edward Thomas who said in 1906 that ‘Wilfrid
Wilson Gibson had long ago swamped his small delightful gift by his
abundance. He is essentially a minor poet in the bad sense, for he is
continually treating subjects poetically, writing about things instead
of creating them’. Of Gibson’s later verse narratives, Thomas was
equally scathing: ‘Gibson has merely been embellishing what would have
been more effective as pieces of rough prose. The verse has added
nothing except unreality, not even brevity’.
Gibson first left the
middle-class security of his home in Hexham at the age of 34, residing
briefly in Glasgow where he was accepted into literary society as a hard
up but genteel poet. He reviewed books for the ‘Glasgow Herald’.
In the summer of 1912, with
10 published volumes to his credit, Gibson finally left Hexham for
London to broaden his literary horizons and never returned to his native
town, except for very occasional visits.
He was known by editors
John Middleton Murry and Katherine Mansfield as a contributor to the
magazine ‘Rhythm’ and they found a cheap room in the city, above the
‘Poetry Bookshop’, for the penniless poet.
Impressed by Gibson’s ‘singular integrity’, the literary patron Sir Edward Marsh appointed him assistant editor of ‘Rhythm’.
He moved to Dymock in
Gloucestershire in 1914 to join a group of poets and his new bride went
with him, Geraldine Townshend (daughter of poet Harold Munro of the
Poetry Bookshop in London), who he had married in Dublin in December
1913. One of the Dymock Poets, the American Robert Frost, said of Gibson
that ‘he is much talked of in America at the present time. He’s just
one of the plain folks with none of the marks of the literary poseur
about him’. The poet Rupert Brooke affectionately nicknamed him
‘Wibson’.
He was turned down by the
Army because of his shaky health and poor eyesight but was recruited to
the war effort in 1917 when he served as a clerical worker in the Army
Service Corps at Sydenham, near London. Shortly beforehand, he had
embarked upon a successful reading tour of America.
His son Michael was born in 1918.
Gibson always belittled his
own work. Speaking about his small volume ‘Battle’, which contained 32
poems about the war, he said ‘I had to publish it as I felt I must make
my little protest, however feeble and inneffectual - so don’t be too
hard on me’.
In war and in peace, he
tried to capture the lives of ordinary people and he acquired a
reputation as a poet who identified with the urban poor and who
understood the harshness of the lives of working people, what he called
‘the heartbreak in the heart of things’.
‘Wibson’ continued to
publish a selection of poems every two years or so until 1950 and he
still went on reading and lecturing tours around Britain, despite money
problems and the aches and pains of rheumatism and fibrositis. But his
work declined greatly in popularity and is scarcely known today, though
it was included in Philip Larkin’s ‘Oxford Book of 20th Century Verse’.
He died at Virginia Water
in Surrey in a nursing home on May 26th 1962, aged 83. He had written to
Robert Frost in 1939 that ‘I am one of those unlucky writers whose
books have predeceased him’.
Yet ,as Gibson said
himself,: ‘We shall always have poets while we have lovers’. To this
extent, his poetry lives on in ‘The Heart Of All England’.
O YOU WHO DRINK MY COOLING WATERS CLEAR
FORGET NOT THE FAR HILLS FROM WHENCE THEY FLOW
WHERE OVER FELL AND MOORLAND YEAR BY YEAR
SPRING SUMMER AUTUMN WINTER COME AND GO
WITH SHOWERING SUN AND RAIN AND STORM AND SNOW
WHERE OVER THE GREEN BENTS FOREVER BLOW
THE FOUR FREE WINDS OF HEAVEN; WHERE TIME FALLS
IN SOLITARY PLACES CALM AND SLOW.
WHERE PIPES THE CURLEW AND THE PLOVER CALLS,
BENEATH THE OPEN SKY MY WATERS SPRING
BENEATH THE CLEAR SKY WELLING FAIR AND SWEET,
A DRAUGHT OF COOLNESS FOR YOUR THIRST TO BRING,
A SOUND OF COOLNESS IN THE BUSY STREET.
WILFRED WILSON GIBSON HEXHAM FEB -1901
Inscription on north side of Memorial Fountain in Hexham Market Place
N.B. ‘Wilfrid’ misspelt on Memorial!
