Emeritus

Cox Brian

The leisure in which Brian Cox now writes his poems is hard-earned. Poetry, always his chief passion as reader and teacher, was forced to the edges of his life during the years in which he followed his other vocation in the world of education. When, shortly before his retirement in 1993, his "Collected Poems" appeared, it was clear that he had managed to write distinctive verse against the odds. His new collection has the freshness of a writer set free in a world which before contrained him. The presence of a physical universe, fulfilling all the senses, is palpable in his language; there is also an undercurrent of impassioned memory and what one critic called – in relation to this "Collected Poems" – "anticipatory elegy", the accepted knowledge of change and loss. There is an ambitious series of poems dedicated to writers and artists he admires: Saul Bellow, Chekhov, Van Gogh and Walter Benjamin.

About the Author

Brian Cox (as C. B. Cox) co-edited the controversial Black Papers on Education (1969-1977) and chaired the National Curriculum English Working Group (1988-1989). His book on National Curriculum English, "Cox on Cox" (1991), became a best-seller. In 1993 he retired as John Edward Taylor Professor of English Literature at Manchester University, after serving as Dean of the Faculty of Arts (1984-1986) and Pro-Vice Chancellor (1987-1991). He has published books of literary criticism, an autobiography, and edited anthologies and collections of essays. He was a founder editor of "Critical Quarterly". After retirement he chaired the Arvon Foundation for three years and the North West Arts Board for six, including two years as a member of the Arts Council. In retirement he edited a two-volume collection of essays, "African Writers", for Scribners, and wrote a second book on the "National Curriculum" ("The Battle for the English Curriculum", 1995). He remains an associate poetry editor of Critical Quarterly. His collection, "My Eightieth Year to Heaven", was published by Carcanet in August 2007.

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