Saturday 5 May 2012

Clere Parsons (Trevor James Herbert) 1908-31

An English poet who was born in India who attended St Paul’s School where he met Lowry’s friend John Davenport. 

He later attended Christ Church, Oxford, where he edited both Oxford Poetry and Oxford Outlook, and (with Bernard Spencer) Sir Galahad, a magazine modelled on Jacob Bronowski and William Empson’s Cambridge University student magazine Experiment. He died in Oxford in tragic circumstances following a diabetic coma. (Geoffrey Grigson Recollections Pg. 23). 'Poems by Clere Parsons, Born 1908, died 1931' was collected by Herbert Read and published by T.S. Eliot.

Lowry quotes 2 lines from Clere Parson’s poem “Never Before Has Seemed Any Event…” as an epigraph to the story 'In Le Havre' , “A ship crossed, and beyond/Hull down, the lone sea’s curve”.

We must assume that Lowry was familiar with Parson's poetry through John Davenport.


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