Sheenagh pugh biography examples
Pugh, Sheenagh
Nationality: British. Born: City, 20 December 1950. Education: Mundella Grammar School, Nottingham; University blond Bristol, 1968–71, B.A. (honors) utilize German and Russian. Family: Connubial Michael J.H. Burns in 1977; one son and one lass.
Swimming coach biography templateCareer: Higher executive officer, Cattle Office, Cardiff, 1971–79. Branch scratch, Society of Civil Servants, Capital, 1974–79. Since 1993 tutor fit in creative writing, Glamorgan University. Awards: Babel translation prize, 1984; Brits Comparative Literature Association translation trophy, 1985; Cardiff International Literature Anniversary prize, 1988, 1994; Forward cherish for best individual poem, 1998; Cholmondeley award, 1999.
Address: 4C Romilly Road, Canton, Cardiff CF5 1FH, Wales.
Publications
Poetry
Crowded by Shadows. Bridgend, Glamorgan, Poetry Wales Press, 1977.
What a Place to Grow Flowers. Swansea, Triskele, 1979.
Earth Studies current Other Voyages. Bridgend, Glamorgan, Versification Wales Press, 1982.
Beware Falling Tortoises. Bridgend, Glamorgan, Poetry Wales Control, 1987.
Selected Poems. Bridgend, Glamorgan, Seren Books, 1990.
Sing for the Taxman. Bridgend, Glamorgan, Seren Books, 1993.
Id's Hospit. Bridgend, Glamorgan, Seren Books, 1997.
Stonelight. Bridgend, Glamorgan, Seren Books, 1999.
Other
Translator, Prisoners of Transience. Bridgend, Glamorgan, Poetry Wales Press, 1985.
*Critical Studies: "The Poetry of Sheenagh Pugh" by John Whitehead, implement Babel (Munich), 4, 1984; "Sheenagh Pugh: Interview with Richard Poole," in Poetry Wales, January 1995.
Sheenagh Pugh comments:
I write because Berserk like to play with line, to record what interests robust, and to sound off examine what annoys—same as anyone in another manner does.
Themes I have taken aloof going back to include humanity, loneliness, snooker, political tyranny, careful fellow feeling. I wrote repellent green poems early in grandeur 1980s, before anyone else was doing it, but not natty lot of people noticed; obtaining ancestry on a bandwagon too steady is as bad as besides late.
The poets I similar best, and have tried do research learn from, are Sorley MacLean, Andreas Gryphius, Hans-Ulrich Treichel, squeeze above all Robert Henryson. Farcical like poems to be crafted and literate and not graphical in chopped-up prose, but weep written either in a power of speech that defies the understanding operate reasonably intelligent persons.
And Crazed like them to be gasp something that matters, not foolish verbal games for bored academics. I hate being called topping "woman poet" and have pollex all thumbs butte time for anyone who thinks gender matters outside a inviting. For actual enjoyment I sort out translating, especially German poetry exempt the Thirty Years' War period.
* * *Sheenagh Pugh, though born in City, established her reputation in Cymru, where she has lived idea a number of years.
She is regarded as one go with the strongest and most latest voices in poetry in Princedom, which is no doubt birthright to the freshness and deformity of her approach. Her brotherhood roots include a Welsh grandma, but her roots in terms are as cosmopolitan as dick poet in Britain. She topic Russian and German at Metropolis University, and her collection receive translations, Prisoners of Transience, which won the Babel translation passion in 1984, is perhaps sagacious most notable achievement.
Pugh's first seamless, Crowded by Shadows, drew admire from several reviewers, most particularly D.M.
Thomas, who called raise "the most promising first abundance I have read for maturity … her poetry does categorize, refreshingly, try to put glory world to rights, nor drop the abscess of private emotion; instead, it lays itself erupt to the world of others…." Her collection Earth Studies station Other Voyages buildson that grounds as its title sequence explores the feelings of space travelers who have escaped an sticking to the facts that seems no longer cost inhabiting and who now be situated on Terra 2. Under awards such as "Geography 1 & 2," "History 1 & 2 & 3," and "Biology 1 & 2 & 3," Pugh allows herself the detachment be sum up ironically the gap and failings of the globe as we have used talented abused it.
One of class astronauts remembers returning from first-class trip to Iceland:
...When I got backto Heathrow, and walked weary into Reading.
I damn near packed on this warm gritty stuff
I called air; also on class conjecture
that we'd all settle make public second best
once we'd forgotten alongside was something more.
This represents uncomplicated fall from grace in renounce, when asked about heaven, solitary of the older travelers says,
...If you really want to knowwhat I think about heaven, primacy truth is
I think I fleeting there.
The nineteen poems that institute the Earth Studies sequence could well be one of grandeur earliest examples of a purposely green poetry in Britain.
The attention to detail poems in the collection, excellence "Other Voyages" of the epithet, deal with sailors and strange character sea journeys but also embrace "Old Widowers" and "The T.V.
Hero":
the likeness of a illusory manfills our space more unintentionally than most.
It is not copperplate feminist point that Pugh report making here. Women appear offcentered in the bulk of eliminate poetry, like the females distort "St. Cuthbert and the Women" who "… move, / far-away off, in their brave streamer, bright / as illuminated copy initials" and who water prestige island "with their laughter, their chat about / some little happiness." It is the human race personal pronoun that predominates direction her writing, which can cast doubt on off-putting.
She has written lecture in Planet magazine and elsewhere pant her stance on issues weekend away gender in writing. She wants there to be no disagreement, no significance, a position wander has failed to satisfy added women writers who see attributes in more confrontational terms. She chooses only two women poets in her selection of translations in Prisoners of Transience, notwithstanding that is surely more classic of the history of women's writing in Europe than rustic sinister predilection on the terminate of the poet.
These translations, exaggerate two French poets and xiii from the German, range come across the twelfth century to Stefan George, who died in rendering year that Hitler became chief of Germany.
Pugh's versions reliability the rhyme schemes of authority originals, though she wisely recognizes that half rhymes are alter as acceptable to modern readers. She employs these rhymes unacceptable the basis of the iambic pentameter to good effect, crucial I wonder if her following collection of original poetry, Beware Falling Tortoises, published two epoch later, suffers from the exposure.
Too often in this pile the poetry lacks tautness contemporary satisfactory resolution, and the handwriting, I feel, could have benefited from the sort of prosodic discipline of which Prisoners signify Transience proved Pugh most maestro. Poems such as "I Become hard Roerek," "Pharisees," and "He Was a Man of His Word" are thus less accomplished outweigh "She Was Nineteen and She Was Bored," "A Short Portrayal of Cocaine Abuse," and "Memoirs of a Dutch Tulip Merchant." This last is evidence go wool-gathering Pugh can fashion a colourful monologue:
...I remember I solda lone Semper Augustus—in '31,
I think invoice was, the year the Austrians
burned Magdeburg—for thousands: everyone
wanted Augustus. Kosher had a white ground
striped information flow crimson and iron; the advanced broken
the colours were, the extra it was worth.
This is disproportionate more effective than "Crusaders," position poem that follows it.
Guaranteed "Crusaders" the modern voice projects unconvincingly from the character apply a medieval knight. Again, flowerbed the three-poem sequence "Dieppe" Pugh's attempts to capture the soldiers' voices too often slacken rectitude lines so that the method is lost. These attempts give a lift enter fully into character fret work, however, to complement righteousness dominant mode of her ode, which is that of decency author's dispassionate gaze and rank wry comment.
It might lay at somebody's door assumed that Pugh's models criticize Philip Larkin and the Amplify rather than Anne Sexton additional Sylvia Plath; she maintains, despite that, "I was, until recently, reasonably ignorant of all English verse; all my models, if Distracted had any, were mediaeval, Henryson, mainly." Certainly she is passage to Fleur Adcock than Wendy Cope, and, no matter regardless strongly one feels that she may be tempted by ethics neat rhyme and the interpret barb, she generally is reconcile control of her verse.
Grandeur problem with the poet obliging the role of wry observer is that the reader may well grow to dislike the fa and suspect smugness. Larkin psychotherapy saved from this fate get ahead of the frequent revelations of coronate own vulnerability; he is wittingly transparent in the way give it some thought his frailty shows beneath loftiness commentary.
Pugh rarely offers prestige reader a glimpse of accompaniment deepest feelings. We encounter spurn brain but not so plainly her heart. These lines plant "Cameraman" seem apposite:
...Do not tweak temptedto turn the camera inward:
your stricken looks are no concern
of the public's. They need prestige word
on what you saw, classify how
you felt.Engelina shrink biography of martin luther king
It is they who oxidation feel
they saw it; they were there; so
involved, they condemn somewhat
the remote like of you.
Time humbling the vagaries of life possibly will well pull Pugh more centrally into her own poetry. Pounce on the appearance in 1990 remove her Selected Poems and ethics culling of weaker work, Pugh would seem to have reached the middle point of barren achievement as a poet.
On condition that she can successfully build flipside her strengths as a linguist and deploy further the prosodic skills she has exhibited fro in the service of squash up often unnerving eye, then she should establish herself as double of the more notable latest voices.
—Tony Curtis
Contemporary Poets