Macsweeney

BARRY PATRICK MacSWEENEY (1948 - 2000)

The poet was born in Newcastle and attended Broadwood primary school and Rutherford Grammar School. He joined the Newcastle Evening Chronicle, went on to Harlow technical college's journalism course, where the poet J.H. Prynne became a lifelong friend, and subsequently worked on Westminster Press local newspapers. This included a long stint on the Kentish Times. He eventually became editor of the Shields Gazette for which he wrote the Mouth of the Tyne column. He contracted the journalist's industrial disease, alcoholism, which eventually cost him his life.

MacSweeney was a part of the flourishing literary scene in '60s Newcastle, and ran his own imprint Blacksuede Boot Press (he was a sharp dresser). He also came to the attention of Michael Dempsey, editor of Hutchinson's New Authors imprint. It was they who published his first book The Boy from the Green Cabaret Tells of His Mother (1968). MacSweeney was even nominated for Oxford's chair of poetry, a publicity stunt which did little for his serious reputation (he got three votes). His own view of poetry was in fact formed round a myth of failure and belated recognition, somewhat on the lines of Rimbaud. He also detested the destruction of communities and the consequent impact on individual lives. He contrasted social and personal crisis with exalted recollections of a natural world of plants, creatures and the elements.

MacSweeney published more than two dozen titles between 1968 and 1999. These included The Last Bud (1969); Brother Wolf (1972) and Black Torch which deals with North East working class culture and political dissent in mining communities from the Industrial revolution to the 1970s. Ranter (1985) reflects on the Levellers and other dissenting figures. Bloodaxe however turned down Ranter supposedly because of its resemblance to Ken Smith's Running Fox. The Tempers of Hazard (1993) was, to his distress, pulped in the year of its publication when Paladin was taken over by Rupert Murdoch. Pearl (1995), a sequence of poems, often tender or celebratory, evoked the figure of a mute Northumbrian girl and was reprinted with The Book of Demons (Bloodaxe 1997) his last substantial collection, where he projects himself as a hapless yet percipient victim of the demon drink, in writing which is both comic and terrifying.

Myers Literary Guide:	The North-East
BARRY PATRICK MacSWEENEY (1948 - 2000) The poet was born in Newcastle and attended Broadwood primary school and Rutherford Grammar School. He joined the Newcastle Evening Chronicle, went on to Harlow technical college's journalism course, where the poet J.H. Prynne became a lifelong friend, and subsequently worked on Westminster Press local newspapers. This included a long stint on the Kentish Times. He eventually became editor of the Shields Gazette for which he wrote the Mouth of the Tyne column. He contracted the journalist's industrial disease, alcoholism, which eventually cost him his life. MacSweeney was a part of the flourishing literary scene in '60s Newcastle, and ran his own imprint Blacksuede Boot Press (he was a sharp dresser). He also came to the attention of Michael Dempsey, editor of Hutchinson's New Authors imprint. It was they who published his first book The Boy from the Green Cabaret Tells of His Mother (1968). MacSweeney was even nominated for Oxford's chair of poetry, a publicity stunt which did little for his serious reputation (he got three votes). His own view of poetry was in fact formed round a myth of failure and belated recognition, somewhat on the lines of Rimbaud. He also detested the destruction of communities and the consequent impact on individual lives. He contrasted social and personal crisis with exalted recollections of a natural world of plants, creatures and the elements. MacSweeney published more than two dozen titles between 1968 and 1999. These included The Last Bud (1969); Brother Wolf (1972) and Black Torch which deals with North East working class culture and political dissent in mining communities from the Industrial revolution to the 1970s. Ranter (1985) reflects on the Levellers and other dissenting figures. Bloodaxe however turned down Ranter supposedly because of its resemblance to Ken Smith's Running Fox. The Tempers of Hazard (1993) was, to his distress, pulped in the year of its publication when Paladin was taken over by Rupert Murdoch. Pearl (1995), a sequence of poems, often tender or celebratory, evoked the figure of a mute Northumbrian girl and was reprinted with The Book of Demons (Bloodaxe 1997) his last substantial collection, where he projects himself as a hapless yet percipient victim of the demon drink, in writing which is both comic and terrifying.
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