Collected Poems

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Causley is one of today’s preeminent writers of children’s poetry, and his children’s verse bears an illuminating relation to his work for adults. “When I write a poem,” Causley has commented, “I don’t know whether it’s for a child or adult.” His children’s book, Figgie Hobbin (1970), for instance, reveals the continuity of his work. Although the poems in Figgie Hobbin are simple in structure and often written from a child’s perspective, they are almost indistinguishable from his adult verse. (It is instructive to remember that Blake published his Songs of Innocence as an illustrated children’s book. It was posterity that reclassified it to the more respectable category of pure lyric.) In these children’s poems he explores his major themes in a fully characteristic way. Indeed they fit seamlessly into the Collected Poems (1975), where they are presented without comment among his adult poems. Moreover, as a group, these tight and polished poems rank high among Causley’s published work, and validate his theory that a truly successful children’s poem is also a genuine adult poem. “What Has Happened to Lulu?,”“Tell, Me, Tell Me, Sarah Jane,” and “If You Should Go to Caistor Town” are among Causley’s most accomplished ballads; “I Saw a Jolly Hunter” is among his best humorous poems. “I Am the Song” has an epigrammatic perfection that eludes classification, and and “Who?” may be the finest lyric he has ever written. Among the English poetry of the last half century, Charles Causley’s could well turn out to be the best loved and most needed.’ Causley was born at Launceston, Cornwall, to Charles Samuel Causley, who worked as a groom and gardener, and his wife Laura Jane Bartlett, who was in domestic service. He was educated at the local primary school and Launceston College. When he was seven, in 1924, his father died from long-standing injuries incurred in World War I. [1] Charles Stanley Causley CBE FRSL (24 August 1917 – 4 November 2003) was a British poet, school teacher and writer. His work is often noted for its simplicity and directness as well as its associations with folklore, legends and magic, especially when linked to his native Cornwall.

At first glance Charles Causley’s life may seem quiet, ordinary, perhaps even hum drum. A private man, he became a schoolteacher in the same school that he himself attended and he lived in a cottage just a few metres from the one in which he was born. An only child, who never married, he spent many years nursing his elderly mother and left his Cornish home only rarely. Yet through the prism of his poetry there emerges a vibrant world vividly observed and a life keenly felt. Credit: causleytrust.org In his own words Written at the height of British Neo-romanticism, which made personal style and individual voice the preconditions of artistic authenticity, Causley’s “Nursery Rhyme of Innocence and Experience” revels in its impersonality. The poem is anonymous in the sense of the finest traditional ballads–the author’s individuality has defiantly appropriated a universal style. If Blake chose the term song in his “Songs of Innocence and Experience” to denote their radical simplicity and directness of expression versus conventional eighteenth century literary poems, then Causley’s title suggests his deliberate attempt to recapture a straightforward Blakean clarity. The poem concludes this exchange between a returning sailor and the boy to whom he has bought gifts: I Had a Little Cat (2009) -- an intervening version between those of the Collected Poems for Children, aboveNow eighty, Charles Causley stands as one of Britain’s three or four finest living poets. He is the master of at least five major poetic modes or genres–the short narrative, the war poem, the religious poem, children’s poetry, and the personal lyric. The historical accident that none of these categories, except the last, is currently fashionable among literary critics will not concern posterity. Nor does it greatly concern most contemporary readers. No other living British poet of Causley’s distinction rivals his general popularity or commands so diverse a readership. His admirers stretch from schoolchildren to his fellow poets. (After Betjeman’s death, British poets voted Causley as their first choice to become the next Poet Laureate.) The special quality of this esteem is evident in the comments of the current Laureate, Ted Hughes: He was presented with the Heywood Hill Literary Prize in 2000. Between 1962 and 1966 he was a member of the Poetry Panel of the Arts Council of Great Britain. He was twice awarded a travelling scholarship by the Society of Authors. There was a campaign to have him appointed Poet Laureate on the death of Sir John Betjeman, but in the end, that role was given to Ted Hughes. Causley himself was not very keen on the idea. However, to the people of his home town, he became "the greatest poet laureate we never had". He was interviewed by Roy Plomley on Desert Island Discs on 1 December 1979: his music choices included five classical selections and three others, while his chosen book was Boswell's Life of Johnson. [8] Sir Andrew Motion to Judge The Charles Causley Poetry Competition 2016". Literature Works SW - Nurturing literature development activity in South West England. 21 September 2016 . Retrieved 18 January 2017. As well as words Causley loved music and was able to play both the fiddle and the piano. In his youth he was the pianist of a local band called the Rhythm Boys and provided the music for village dances around Cornwall. He once said ‘I think I have frightened more woodworm out of more pianos than anyone in the west of England.’ War & Teaching

From boyhood Causley intended to be an author. He began a novel at the age of nine and continued writing in a desultory fashion throughout his education at Launceston College. At fifteen, however, Causley quit school to begin working. He spent seven gloomy years first as a clerk in a builder’s office and later working for a local electrical supply company. This period of isolation would have destroyed most aspiring young writers, but in Causley’s case, it proved decisive. Cut off from institutionalized intellectual life, he developed in the only way available–as an autodidact. “As far as poetry goes,” Causley has commented on these formative years, “I’m self-educated. I read very randomly, I read absolutely everything.” He also experimented–with poetry, fiction, and most successfully with drama. In the late 1930s he published three one-act plays. During the same period Causley also played piano in a four-piece dance band, an experience which may have influenced his later predilection for writing poems in popular lyric forms such as the ballad. Bare Fiction - Charles Causley Poetry Competition 1st... | Facebook". www.facebook.com. Archived from the original on 26 February 2022 . Retrieved 18 January 2017. The visionary mode has its greatest range of expression in Causley’s religious poetry. No reader of Farewell, Aggie Weston would have guessed that its author would become one of the few contemporary Christian poets of genuine distinction. Yet the new poems in Union Street confirmed Causley’s transformation from veteran to visionary. The devotional sonnet, “I Am the Great Sun,” which opens the section of new poems reveals a more overtly compassionate side to Christianity than found in Survivor’s Leave. Here Christ speaking from the cross (the poem was inspired by a seventeenth-century Norman crucifix) announces his doomed love for man: Causley was born at Launceston in Cornwall and was educated there and in Peterborough. His father died in 1924 from long-standing injuries from the First World War. Causley had to leave school at 15 to earn money, working as an office boy during his early years. He served in the Royal Navy during the Second World War, as a coder, an experience he later wrote about in a book of short stories, Hands to Dance and Skylark. Waterman, Rory (2016), Belonging and Estrangement in the Poetry of Philip Larkin, R. S. Thomas and Charles Causley, Routledge Publishing.He spent his evenings writing and his first collection of poems about his war time experiences, ‘F arewell Aggie Weston’ was published in 1951. In perhaps one of the most striking poems ‘Convoy’ Causley’s vividly laments the death of a sailor in the North Sea, perhaps an expression of the guilt he felt returning home when so many others didn’t. Writing because you must . . . Charles Causley (1917-2003) was born and brought up in Launceston, Cornwall and lived there for most of his life. When he was only seven his father died from wounds sustained during the First World War. This early loss and his own experience of service in the Second World War affected Causley deeply. His work fell outside the main poetic trends of the 20th century, drawing instead on native sources of inspiration: folk songs, hymns, and above all, ballads. His poetry was recognised by the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry in 1967 and a Cholmondeley Award in 1971. In addition to these public honours, the clarity and formality of his poetry has won Causley a popular readership, making him, in the words of Ted Hughes, one of the “best loved and most needed” poets of the last fifty years. The Charles Causley Trust, a registered charity, exists to celebrate his life and work and promote new literature activity in the community and region in which he lived. [13] In 2006, the trust secured Cyprus Well, the poet's small house in Launceston, for the nation. After considerable repairs, refurbishment and upgrading, that has been opened on a limited basis to the public, and to provide a facility for a varied programme of activities. Most particularly, there has been a series of residencies for writers of all kinds, artists and musicians, as well as other heritage events. These promote both Causley's life and work, and the arts in general—especially across the South West region of Cornwall and Devon.

In the collection’s final poem ‘Who’ Causley writes of seeing the ghostly figure of himself as a child haunting the places around Launceston he has known his whole life. He sees his younger self wandering beside the River Kensey in old fashioned clothes and has a vision of the fields where he once played, now covered by houses. From the Other Bank . . . Dana Gioia, Barrier of a Common Language: an American looks at contemporary British poetry (2003), University of Michigan Press, ISBN 9780472095827; pg. 58.

Causley stayed true to what he called his 'guiding principle', adopted from Auden and others, that: "while there are some good poems which are only for adults, because they pre-suppose adult experience in their readers, there are no good poems which are only for children."

International Poetry Competition Results". The Charles Causley Trust. 30 March 2020 . Retrieved 25 August 2020. We are left with uncertainties. Is the speaker expecting to die soon as well? The stream and the reference to crossing it in stanza four could suggest he is waiting to cross over; to die and join them. Perhaps because of his years spent teaching Charles always had a special affinity with children and some of his best loved poetry was written for them. His book of poems for children ‘Figgie Hobbin’ named after a traditional raisin-filled Cornish pastry, was published in 1970 and I remember having it read to me as a child. Crammed with witty, satirical rhymes, many with a nod to Cornish legends, it became a firm family favourite. All Cornwall Thunders at My Door: a Biography of Charles Causley (Laurence Green, The Cornovia Press, 2013); ISBN 978-1908878083 After its early years, it developed into an international competition. In 2018, the announcements and presentations were hosted by Paul Tyler, Lord Linkinhorne (a patron of the Causley Trust), at the House of Lords. [15]

From the Other Bank . . .

That haunted – and haunting – blend of reflections on comradeship, loss, anger, isolation, shame and obligation informs many of his poems drawing upon war in one way or another. Some recount evocative episodes, or sketch insightful portraits, from Causley’s six years of service. Others are a veteran’s musings, up to nearly 50 years on, about ‘aftermath’. The war subtly infused much of his peacetime world and vision. Considered one of the most important British poets of his generation, Charles Causley was born, lived and died in the small Cornish town of Launceston. But despite initial appearances his was anything but an inactive or uneventful life. Children’s toys?’Thematically, Farewell, Aggie Weston presents the issues that will concern him throughout his career–the harsh reality of war (“Son of the Dying Gunner”), the tragic deaths of the young and promising (“A Ballad for Katharine of Aragon”), the fascination of foreign landscapes (“HMS Glory at Sydney”), and, most important, the fall from innocence to experience, a sense of which pervades the entire volume. Only Causley’s restless, visionary Christianity is specifically absent from the volume, although with the gift of hindsight one can see the elements which nurtured it in several of the poems about death and war. In 1958, Charles Causley was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature (FRSL), and was awarded a CBE in 1986. Amongst a number of other other awards, he was given the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry in 1967, and was presented with the Heywood Hill Literary Prize in 2000, when he characteristically exclaimed (at the age of 83), “Goodness! What an encouragement!”.