Sail, Lawrence 1942–

(Lawrence Richard Sail)

PERSONAL: Born October 29, 1942, in London, England; son of Helmut Gustav (a painter) and Barbara (Wright) Sail; married Teresa Luke, September 18, 1965 (divorced, August, 1981); married Helen Bird, 1994; children: (first marriage) Matthew Charles, Erica Jocelyn; (second marriage) Rose Arlette and Grace Romola (twins). Education: St. John's College, Oxford, B.A. (with honors), 1964. Hobbies and other interests: Music, sailing.

ADDRESSES: Home—Richmond Villa, 7 Wonford Rd., Exeter, Devon EX2 4LF, England.

CAREER: Greater London Council, London, England, administrative officer, 1964–65; teacher of modern languages at schools in Nairobi, Kenya, and in England, 1966–90; writer. Blundell's School, visiting writer, 1980–81. Oxford University, member of Senior Common Room of St. John's College; South West Arts Literature Panel, member, 1978–85; Arvon Foundation, chair, 1990–94; Cheltenham Festival of Literature, program director, 1991, codirector, 1999.

AWARDS, HONORS: Hawthornden fellow, 1992; Arts Council writer's bursary, 1993; Cholmondeley Award, 2004.

WRITINGS:

POETRY

Opposite Views, Dent (London, England), 1974.

The Drowned River, Mandeville Press (Hitchin, Hertfordshire, England), 1978.

The Kingdom of Atlas, Secker & Warburg (London, England), 1980.

Devotions, Secker & Warburg (London, England), 1987.

Aquamarine, Gruffyground Press (Sidcot, Somerset, England), 1988.

Out of Land: New and Selected Poems, Bloodaxe Books (Newcastle upon Tyne, England), 1992.

Building into Air, Bloodaxe Books (Newcastle upon Tyne, England), 1995.

The World Returning, Bloodaxe Books (Newcastle upon Tyne, England), 2002.

Eye-Baby, Bloodaxe Books (Newcastle upon Tyne, England), 2006.

EDITOR

South West Review: A Celebration, South West Arts (Exeter, England), 1985.

First and Always: Poems for the Great Ormond Street Children's Hospital, Faber (London, England), 1988.

One Hundred Voices: A Century of County Councils (children's poetry), Wheaton (Exeter, England), 1989.

(With Kevin Crossley-Holland) The New Exeter Book of Riddles, Enitharmon Press (London, England), 1999.

(With Kevin Crossley-Holland) Light Unlocked: Christmas Card Poems, Enitharmon Press (London, England), 2005.

OTHER

Cross-currents: Essays, Enitharmon Press (London, England), 2005.

Author of a radio play titled Death of an Echo, 1980. Contributor of articles and reviews to periodicals, including Poetry Review, Poetry Nation Review, and Stand. Editor, South West Review, 1980–85.

SIDELIGHTS: Lawrence Sail told CA: "Over many years I've appreciated the force of W.H. Auden's injunction at the close of his poem in memory to Yeats. A close second to this, as an aim at least, might be Robert Frost's suggestion that a poem should begin with delight and end in wisdom.

"For me the possibilities of poems remain as challenging as ever. On one level you are only as good as the poem you are about to write. Nothing illustrates this better, as emblem or image, than the sea, to whose perspectives I return again and again. Protean, it is never the same as it was: look at it, then away and back, and already it has escaped the words you might have formed for it. Much of experience seems to have something of the same slipperiness, while also encouraging the urge to commute between it and meaning.

"As to the world my poems inhabit, it's a borderland which straddles dreams and history, discovery and concealment, doubt and belief."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Contemporary Poets, 6th edition, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 1996.

PERIODICALS

Books, December, 1988, p. 30.

Encounter, March, 1987, p. 61.

Listener, March 5, 1987, p. 28.

London Review of Books, April 20, 1989, p. 22.

New Statesman and Society, August 11, 1995, p. 41.

Observer, October 16, 1988, p. 43.

Stand, winter, 1993, p. 22.

Times Literary Supplement, April 10, 1981; December 25, 1987, p. 1435; May 5, 1989, p. 495; January 22, 1993, p. 21.