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Alan Marshfield was born in Portsmouth,
England, in 1933 and has little colour sense.
He had one brother, William Brian (Bill), 1934– 1995, who was a
an artist and thinker by inclination and a naval engineer working on submarine
stabilisers by trade. In their teens Bill developed a love of
literature and Alan caught it from him.
They and
their mother were evacuated in World War Two to Bishop's Waltham,
a village in Hampshire, where their father, William senior, a survivor from Dunkirk,
was also billeted. The two boys enjoyed this first taste of
the countryside, but their mother did not enjoy the two
successive lodgings they found. They returned to Portsmouth before the blitz was over and air-raid shelters
replaced village war games.
In
those early days the
family lived in more than half a dozen houses and rooms and the boys
attended nearly as many schools before finishing their secondary education at
the age of sixteen in the Portsmouth Technical School, where they both
received good final examination results in what was then called the
School Certificate.
From sixteen to nineteen Alan worked as a cartographer at
the Ordnance Survey in Southampton. His hobbies did not at first include writing. They were
reading, mathematics, country rambles, cross-country running,
rowing, ballroom dancing and girls. A few of the last were, not
surprisingly, pretty significant to him. He always remembered what they
looked like and what they did together, but not
their names. He had a terrible memory for names.
From nineteen to twenty-one he did National Service in the Royal Engineers as a
clerical private (‘sapper’), took an interest in Buddhism and
Esperanto, taught himself Latin, started to write poetry, and began a
lifelong correspondence with a pen friend, Jim Donalson, in Florida, who
in 1972 had two copies of Alan’s poetry bound in hard covers, an act
of intense dedication to the friendship.
In the 1950s he was also introduced to Thomas Harri (T.H.) Jones, the Welsh poet
then living and working in Portsmouth, who was his first poetic mentor.
They spent many evenings drinking in Harri’s local and reading poetry to
each other. An account of the life and work of T.H.Jones can be
found in T.H.Jones, Poet of Exile (UWP) by Don Dale-Jones
and Bernard Jones.
After National Service he attended the Portsmouth
Technical College for one year, acquiring A-levels in Latin, French and English.
Two or
three more girlfriends were added to the score. His
friendship with an old school chum, Dave Orton, flourished too, until
Dave disappeared to Canada to become, eventually, a sociologist. They were in their young days rowing and dance-hall
buddies.
For three year, taking him to the age of twenty-five, Alan was a student
at King’s College, London, where he acquired a degree in
English Language and Literature. For
holiday jobs he worked in a pea storage facility, in an ice-cream factory, and as a
demonstrator of yo-yos at the seaside in Southsea. He
edited the college literary magazine (Lucifer) for two years,
made the acquaintance of fellow writers B.S.Johnson and Maureen Duffy,
and met his first wife, Rochelle Gelman.
He married Rochelle on leaving college. The marriage
lasted eighteen months, during which time they lived first in
Wilton, near Salisbury, and then in Raynes Park, S.W. London.
He started his career as a secondary school teacher.
He lived with a French assistante, Aline Eschénasy
for about a year in Radlett, Herts.
Then he took a flat in Kensington, taught at Holland Park
School, and made the acquaintance of Martin Bell, the poet, who
introduced him to The Group, which was then chaired by Edward
Lucie-Smith in Chelsea.
He was beginning to get his work published in literary magazines (see
acknowledgments) and in the 1970s published three slim volumes.
Important to him at one time or another among his
poetic friends have been Fleur Adcock, Martin Bell, Alan Brownjohn, Peter Jay
(editor of The Anvil Press), B.S.Johnson, T.H.Jones, George
MacBeth, Farida Majid, Peter Porter, Peter Redgrove and Ian Robinson
(Editor of Oasis Books). To many teachers, but paramountly to ‘Gus’
Gates, who taught him to love mathematics and the countryside, he is
also grateful.
His most cherished friend was the witty and
clever Lewis Winstock.
In 1961 he met his second
wife, Lise Otava, from Finland. They married in 1962. Here is a list of poems
which would not have existed
without her.
All Dead But
Angharad
Anniversary
Centaurs
children of the new forest
Christmas Eve
Elektra
Eros
For Lady Moon
Grandmother and Child
Her Answer
La Belle Lectrice
Mother’s Day
port isaac
Queen Tiy
Thanatos
The Birth of Venus
The Cliff House
The Conservative
The Kiss
The Pain of Helena Nagel
Wych Hazel
He and Lise have two children, Undine (born 1964
in Crawley), and Crispin (born 1967 in Edgware).
In 2000 Undine went to New Zealand with her partner Michael Wrenn
and their then two-year-old son Max. Undine has worked largely in Arts PR.
After six years in Germany designing for Volkswagen, Crispin is
now working as a car
designer for Bentley at Crewe, where he designed the Queen’s
Golden Jubilee Bentley. He was married to a Czech girl, Katerina Svitorkova,
from whom he is now divorced.
Grandson Max has been
an inspiration for
half-a-dozen poems.
When Alan was first married to Lise, they lived
for a short time in Notting Hill, then for three years in Crawley, then
for longer in Burnt Oak, Edgware, and since 1977 in
the Copthall region of Mill Hill, N.W. London.
All this time, until 1997, he taught, first in grammar
schools, then in comprehensives. He
became Head of English, then Head of Computing, and was for over twenty
years a Senior Teacher.
For
most of those last twenty years as a teacher, before retiring at the age
of 64, he tried his hand at writing novels and also produced a few educational works,
brought out by Glentop and Blackie.
For his published verse see Acknowledgments
and Abraxas Press. On retiring from work he
privately published his complete poems (with notes
and essays) privately in twenty-three 56-page booklets, with four books
of indexes. These were
given to friends and libraries. He then produced a limited version
book
form. For a quick idea of what
he thinks his writing and this site are about, see about
the site and flavours. For many of
the pieces here in book form see Abraxas Press.
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