Collected Poems

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Other awards include the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry in 1967 and a Cholmondeley Award in 1971. In 1973/74 he was visiting fellow in poetry at the University of Exeter, from which institution he received an honorary doctorate on 7 July 1977. [7] With the collections of poetry that followed ‘Survivor’s Leave’ and ‘Union Street’ his reputation was firmly established and in 1958 he was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. His close friend the poet Ted Hughes said: a b Mole, John. "Causley, Charles Stanley". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (onlineed.). Oxford University Press. doi: 10.1093/ref:odnb/92911. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.) 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 . . . Union Street (1957) secured Causley’s reputation as an important contemporary poet. Published with a preface by Edith Sitwell, then at the height of her influence, Union Street collected the best poems from Causley’s first two volumes and added nineteen new ones, including two of his finest poems ever, “I Am the Great Sun” and “At the British War Cemetery, Bayeux,” the last of which Sitwell singled out for particular praise. In her preface, Sitwell placed Causley’s work in its proper historical perspective–English folk song and ballad. While Sitwell praised Causley’s traditional roots, she also noted his “strange individuality.” Like most of Causley’s admirers, however, Sitwell had difficulty in explaining the particular appeal of his work. To express her approval, she repeatedly resorted to vague exclamations of delight, such as “beautiful,”“deeply moving,” and “enchanting.” While these terms describe in some general way the effect Causley’s poetry has on a sympathetic reader, they are so subjective that they shed little light on the special nature of his literary achievement. Unfortunately, Sitwell’s response typifies Causley’s critical reception. His admirers have felt more comfortable in writing appreciations of his work than in examining it in critical terms. The truly “strange individuality” that makes Causley a significant and original artist rather than a faux naif has never been adequately explained. This situation has given most critics the understandable but mistaken impression that while Causley’s poetry may be enjoyed, it is too simple to bear serious analysis. Dana Gioia and Charles Causley, 1984

Through the Granite Kingdom (Wissenschaftlichter Verlag Trier, 2011 – ed. Michael Hanke): a collection of 22 critical essays, in English, by English, German and other writers and academics; ISBN 978-3868213386Truth. Sense. One hopes by now everyone has found something at which to cringe. These are not respectable terms to describe–let alone praise–serious poetry at the end of the twentieth century. But what if Hughes, Sitwell, and Larkin are right in the criteria they use?–not right for every poet in every period but for the particular case of Causley? What if he is indeed a poet who has found an authentic, inventive and powerful way to do what poets have traditionally done–to give their own people unforgettable and truthful words, images, and stories by which to apprehend their lives and time? Some readers think so. Count me as one of them.

As the literary historian A. T. Tolley has noted, “Causley was one of the few poets to see the war continuously from the point of view of the lower ranks.” Farewell, Aggie Weston also has documentary importance since the poems incorporate a wealth of traditional and contemporary naval slang (much of which Causley explains in footnotes). Like Kipling fifty years earlier, Causley demonstrated that the best way to capture the true character of military men was to use their special language. This small volume provides a unique poetic record of the British navy in its last moment of imperial self-confidence. Early in the Morning: A Collection of New Poems (1986), with music by Anthony Castro and illustrations by Michael ForemanAmong the English poetry of the last half century, Charles Causley’s could well turn out to be the best loved and most needed.’ Legacy [ edit ] Causley's grave in St Thomas Churchyard in Launceston, Cornwall, is barely 100 yards from where he was born

He enlisted in the Royal Navy in 1940 and served as an ordinary seaman during the Second World War, firstly aboard the destroyer HMS Eclipse in the Atlantic, at shore bases in Gibraltar and northwest England. Later he served in the Pacific on the aircraft carrier HMS Glory, after promotion to petty officer. Do you know, if I didn’t write poetry, I think I’d explode. All poetry is magic. It is a spell against insensitivity, failure of imagination, ignorance and barbarism. – Charles Causley. 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.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: In “Cowboy Song,” another young man, bereft of family, knows he will be murdered before his next birthday. Even a seemingly straightforward narrative such as the “Ballad of the Faithless Wife” acquires a dark visionary quality when in the last stanza, personal tragedy unexpectedly modulates into allegory:

In 1940 Causley joined the Royal Navy in which he served for the next six years. Having spent all of his earlier life in tranquil Cornwall, he now saw wartime southern Europe, Africa, and Australia. Likewise, having already felt the tragedy of war through the early death of his father, Causley experienced it again more directly in the deaths of friends and comrades. These events decisively shaped his literary vision, pulling him from prose and drama into poetry. “I think I became a working poet the day I joined the destroyer Eclipse at Scapa Flow in August, 1940,” he later wrote. “Though I wrote only fragmentary notes for the next three years, the wartime experience was a catalytic one. I knew that at last I had found my first subject, as well as a form.” Although Causley wrote one book of short stories based on his years in the Royal Navy, Hands to Dance (1951, revised and enlarged in 1979 as Hands to Dance and Skylark), his major medium for portraying his wartime experiences has been poetry.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. Causley travelled still more widely and frequently, however, after taking early retirement in 1976 to pursue a full-time career in writing. [5] International Poetry Competition Results". The Charles Causley Trust. 9 December 2021 . Retrieved 9 December 2021. After demobilisation in 1946, he took advantage of a government scheme to train as a teacher at Peterborough. He then worked full-time as a teacher at his old school for over 35 years, teaching for his very final year at St. Catherine's CofE Primary elsewhere in the town, where the National School had been relocated. He twice spent time in Perth as a visiting Fellow at the University of Western Australia, and also worked at the Banff School of Fine Arts in Canada. A bright and bookish child, he devoured the written word wherever he found it – including the romantic novels his mother, Laura, regularly borrowed from Launceston library.