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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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