Scarfe

FRANCIS SCARFE (1911 - 1986)

Scarfe was born at 539 Stanhope Road in South Shields, where he spent four years at the Royal Merchant Seaman's Orphanage after his father was lost at sea in 1917. He recalled the military-type discipline (he was number 107), playing the bombardon (though unable to carry it to church), and exchanging notes through a wall with a girl he never met.

Scarfe attended the Boys High School in Shields and subsequently Armstrong College, Cambridge and the Sorbonne. By 1936 he was living in Paris, writing surrealist verse and attending meetings of the French Communist Party - both of which he abandoned in 1938. His published poetry includes Inscapes (1940) and Poems and Ballads (1941) and he also produced critical works like Auden and After (1942).

Following his war service, Scarfe held academic posts in Glasgow, Paris and London. He edited the Penguin Baudelaire in 1961. His poem 'Tyne Dock' recalls his 'shaggy mining town' with a sense of loss. ('Tyne Dock Revisited' is unpublished) and "In Memoriam' is a touching tribute to his mother:

As you trailed through the Market together
under the gas-jets, squeezing pennies
to bid for bruised enormous oranges.
As guiding you into the future
she told such marvels you forgot about her
whose hand held yours long after she was gone.

Myers Literary Guide:	The North-East
FRANCIS SCARFE (1911 - 1986) Scarfe was born at 539 Stanhope Road in South Shields, where he spent four years at the Royal Merchant Seaman's Orphanage after his father was lost at sea in 1917. He recalled the military-type discipline (he was number 107), playing the bombardon (though unable to carry it to church), and exchanging notes through a wall with a girl he never met. Scarfe attended the Boys High School in Shields and subsequently Armstrong College, Cambridge and the Sorbonne. By 1936 he was living in Paris, writing surrealist verse and attending meetings of the French Communist Party - both of which he abandoned in 1938. His published poetry includes Inscapes (1940) and Poems and Ballads (1941) and he also produced critical works like Auden and After (1942). Following his war service, Scarfe held academic posts in Glasgow, Paris and London. He edited the Penguin Baudelaire in 1961. His poem 'Tyne Dock' recalls his 'shaggy mining town' with a sense of loss. ('Tyne Dock Revisited' is unpublished) and "In Memoriam' is a touching tribute to his mother: As you trailed through the Market together under the gas-jets, squeezing pennies to bid for bruised enormous oranges. As guiding you into the future she told such marvels you forgot about her whose hand held yours long after she was gone.
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