Remembering North East poet Basil Bunting

Coincidentally, Newcastle-born Lee Hall, writer of Billy Elliot and The Pitmen Painters, has made a programme about Bunting which is to be broadcast by BBC Radio 4 this evening.

Dr Halliday, who is the executor of the Basil Bunting estate and was married for 20 years to the poet's daughter, Maria, said: "I've been thinking of doing this for some years but having retired I now have the time to set things in motion.

"I first met Basil in 1965 when he was already an old man and I have always felt he was a bit of a stranger in his own land, although plenty of poets have heard of him."

Basil Bunting was born in Newcastle in 1900 and died in Hexham General Hospital in 1985.

The years between were packed with incident. He was a conscientious objector in the First World War and served in Intelligence during the Second.

Afterwards he worked in the British Embassy in Teheran, reputedly in a hush hush capacity.

When he married his second wife, Sima Alladadian, an Armenian Kurd, he had to leave the employ of the Foreign Office and moved into journalism.

This eventually brought him to The Journal and Evening Chronicle, where he worked as a sub-editor from 1954-64.

But he had always written poetry and had mixed with some of the greats of 20th Century literature, including Ezra Pound, TS Eliot and WB Yeats.

When encouraged to revive his poetry career by young admirers in Newcastle, he went on to produce his most famous and admired work, an epic poem called Briggflatts.

It is said he wrote it on the train between work and his home in the Tyne Valley.

Dr Halliday, who did a creative writing PhD at Newcastle University, said Basil Bunting has a keen following in America, although the Basil Bunting Poetry Archive is at Durham University.

North East poets Sean O'Brien, Linda France and Paul Batchelor will judge the inaugural Basil Bunting Poetry Award which carries a first prize of £1,000. For full details, visit www.basilbuntingaward.co.uk from March 1.