NORRIS, Leslie 1921-2006

OBITUARY NOTICE—

See index for CA sketch: Born May 21, 1921, in Merthyr Tydfil, Glamorganshire, Wales; died of a cerebral hemorrhage, April 6, 2006, in Provo, UT. Educator and author. Norris was a renowned poet who earned many of Britain's highest honors. Inspired as a boy by such poets as Dylan Thomas, whom he once heard give a reading near his Welsh home, he earned a degree in education from City of Coventry College in 1949. His first two collections, The Tongue of Beauty (1943) and Poems (1946), were released while he was a student, though he would not publish another verse collection after that for nearly twenty years. He later continued on to graduate studies, completing an M.A. in the philosophy of English poetry at the University of South Hampton in 1958. During his early career, Norris was a secondary-school teacher in Yeovil, Somerset. From 1952 to 1955, he was deputy head teacher in Bath, and he served as head teacher in Chichester from 1955 to 1958. Entering academia, he was hired as a lecturer in English at the Training College in Sussex, where he would teach until 1973. By this time, he was becoming a recognized poet, releasing such titles as The Ballad of Billy Rose (1964) and The Loud Winter (1970), and winning an Arts Council Award and the Poetry Society's Alice Hunt Bartlett Prize. Serving occasionally as a visiting professor and resident poet at various learning institutions in the United Kingdom, Norris moved to Utah in 1983 to be the poet in residence and professor of creative writing at Brigham Young University. Though he retired officially in 2003, he held his job title until his death. The winner of England's prestigious Cholmondeley Poetry Award in 1978, Norris was notably the first Welshman to be accepted into both the Royal Society of Literature and the Welsh Academy. Also the winner of the David Higham Prize for fiction, the Katherine Mansfield Triennial Short Story Award, and the John Hughes Prize, Norris continued to publish poetry collections through the year 2000, as well as short stories and translations of the works of Rainer Maria Rilke. Furthermore, he was an editor—including of a 1980 edition of The Mabinogion—and the author of the 2000 picture book Albert and the Angels. Among his other poetry collections are Stone and Fern (1973), Selected Poems (1986), and Winter Wreaths (2000).

OBITUARIES AND OTHER SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

America's Intelligence Wire, April 11, 2006.