Jon Silkin

Jon Silkin (1930 – 1997) was a British poet. He wrote a number of works on the war poetry of World War I. He is known also as editor of the literary magazine Stand, which he founded in 1952, and which continued (with a hiatus from 1957 to 1960) until his death.

He was born in London, in a Jewish family. For a period of about six years in the 1950s, after National Service, he supported himself by manual labour and other menial jobs. His first poetry collection was published in 1954.

He began an association with the University of Leeds in 1958, when he was awarded a two-year GregoryFellowship there. He moved to Newcastle-upon-Tyne in 1965.

Works

• The Portrait and Other Poems (1950)
• The Peaceable Kingdom (1954)
• The Two Freedoms (1958)
• New Poems 1960 (1960) editor with Anthony Cronin and Terence Tiller
• Living Voices (1960)
• The Re-Ordering of the Stones (1961)
• Flash Point An Anthology Of Modern Poetry (1964) editor
• Flower Poems (1964) second edition 1978
• Penguin Modern Poets 7 (1965) with Richard Murphy and Nathaniel Tarn
• Nature with Man (1965)
• Poems New And Selected (1966)
• New and Selected Poems (1966)
• Against Parting by Natan Zach (c. 1967) translator from Hebrew
• Three Poems (1969)
• Poems (1969) editor with Vernon Scannell
• Pergamon Poets VIII (1970) editor with Vernon Scannell
• Amana Grass (1971)
• Killhope Wheel.(1971)
• Out of Battle: The Poetry of the Great War (1972)
• Air That Pricks the Earth (1973)
• Poetry of the Committed Individual: A "Stand" Anthology of Poetry (1973) editor
• The Principle of Water (1974)
• A 'Jarapiri' Poem (1975)
• The Peaceable Kingdom (1975)
• Two Images of Continuing Trouble (19760
• The Little Time-Keeper (1976)
• Jerusalem (1977)
• Into Praising (1978)
• Out of Battle, the Poetry of the Great War (1978)
• The Penguin Book of First World War Poetry (1979) editor
• New Poetry 5: An Arts Council Anthology (1979) editor with Peter Redgrove
• The Lapidary Poems (1979)
• Selected Poems (1980)
• The Psalms and their Spoils (1980)
• Autobiographical Stanzas: 'Someone's Narrative' (1983)
• Footsteps on a Downcast Path (1984)
• Gurney: A Play (1985)
• The Ship's Pasture (1986)
• Selected Poems (1980) new edition
• The Penguin Book of First World War Prose (1989) editor with Jon Glover
• The Lens-Breakers (1992)
• Selected Poems (1993)
• Wilfred Owen: The War Poems (1994) editor
• Watersmeet (1994)
• The Life of Metrical & Free Verse in Twentieth-Century Poetry (1997)
• Testament Without Breath (1998)
• Making a Republic (2002)