Roy Fisher facts for kids
Roy Fisher (born June 11, 1930 – died March 21, 2017) was an English poet and a jazz pianist. His poems showed ideas from modern art and writing in Europe and America. But they also stayed true to his life in the English Midlands. Fisher tried many different writing styles. He often worked outside the main trends of British poetry after World War II. Many poets and critics admired his work.
Contents
Roy Fisher's Life Story
Roy Fisher was born in June 1930. His family lived at 74 Kentish Road in Handsworth, Birmingham. His parents had moved into this home in 1919 and lived there their whole lives. Roy's mother, Emma, was 39 when he was born. He had an older sister and brother. His father, Walter Fisher, worked with jewelry. The family was described as 'poor and careful'. His parents did not belong to any political or religious groups. However, his father sang in a local church choir.
Roy described the area where he grew up as 'ugly'. The industrial factories of Smethwick, south of Handsworth, felt dangerous. The dirty city, war damage, and factories closing down after the war really shaped Fisher's ideas. But he also felt a connection to 'Nature'. His family often took trips to the countryside nearby.
School and Music
Fisher went to Handsworth Grammar School. As a teenager, he became very interested in jazz music. He taught himself how to play the piano. He especially liked musicians from Chicago, like Bud Freeman, Pee Wee Russell, and Joe Sullivan. By his late teens, he was playing music in public with local bands.
In 1948, he went to Birmingham University. He studied English there. After finishing his degree and becoming a teacher, he taught at a grammar school in Newton Abbott, Devon, starting in 1953. He was part of a team that was changing how English was taught. In the same year, Fisher married Barbara Venables, an artist. They had two children together. His son, Ben, became a French professor and created a popular website about narrow-gauge railways. His daughter, Sukey, became a screenwriter.
Teaching and Music Career
In 1957, Fisher moved back to Birmingham. He worked as a jazz musician again. He also started finding ideas for new poems and stories, often late at night. He taught drama at a primary school. In 1958, he moved to Dudley College of Education. In 1963, he became a main lecturer and head of the English and Drama department at Bordesley College of Education in Birmingham.
In 1971, Fisher moved to Keele University. He taught in the American Studies department until 1982. After leaving Keele, he kept working as a writer and jazz musician. He had been a musician since the late 1950s. He even played with some of his childhood heroes, like Bud Freeman and Wild Bill Davison, when they visited Britain.
Later Years
Fisher moved to Upper Hulme, Staffordshire Moorlands, in 1982. Then he moved to Earl Sterndale in Derbyshire in 1986. In 1985, he divorced Barbara Venables Fisher, who passed away in 2007. In 1987, he married Joyce Holliday, a playwright. He lived fifteen years longer than her. Roy Fisher died at home on March 21, 2017, when he was 86 years old.
Roy Fisher's Writings
Early Poems and Books
In 1954, two of Fisher's short poems were read on the BBC by Charles Causley. Another poem was printed in a small magazine called The Window. This poem caught the attention of poet Gael Turnbull. Turnbull was putting together a British issue of an American magazine called Origin. He asked Fisher to send some poems. Fisher and Turnbull became good friends and stayed close until Turnbull died in 2004.
Turnbull introduced Fisher to the works of American modern poets. These included William Carlos Williams, Robert Creeley, Charles Olson, and Louis Zukovsky. He also met Basil Bunting through Turnbull. Cid Corman, the editor, even gave Fisher poetry lessons by mail. From these writers, Fisher learned a serious and challenging way of writing.
Turnbull helped a lot with getting Fisher's early work published. Fisher's first small book, City (1961), was published by Turnbull's Migrant Press. This book was a mix of poems and stories. Fisher was not happy with it, but it 'caught people’s attention.'
A second small book, Ten Interiors with Various Figures, came out in 1966. It was a strange series of story poems. Some had short lines, but many used very long lines, almost like prose. That same year, Fisher also published The Ships Orchestra. This was a long prose story, also showing a dream-like style. The idea for this work came from Picasso's painting, ‘Three Musicians’. Fisher wrote this book section by section. Each new part grew from the one before it. The story grew naturally, without a clear plot. The writing is often very funny.
After these books, Fisher felt stuck and did not write anything for five years. In 1968, when Fulcrum published Collected Poems, Fisher thought he would not write again. This book brought together all the work Fisher wanted to keep.
Writing in the 1970s
Fisher started writing again in 1971. He wrote several prose pieces and poem series. ‘The Cut Pages’ is one of his most challenging works from the 1970s. The late 1960s had been hard for him. He kept a journal of his difficult life details. Fisher said ‘The Cut Pages’ was an 'exercise in self-permission'. He cut blank pages from his notebook and wrote on them the opposite of what was in his journal. He wrote things 'there was no constraint upon'. He kept writing until all the pages were used.
Matrix was also published in 1971. The main poem, ‘Matrix’, was inspired by paintings. These included Böcklin's ‘The Isle of the Dead’ and Monet's waterlily paintings. This book also had ‘Glenthorne Poems’ and ‘The Six Deliberate Acts’. Fisher also worked with visual artists. Two of his works, ‘Correspondence’ and ‘Metamorphoses’, had pictures by Tom Phillips. They were published in 1970. ‘Also’, a work with artist Derrick Greaves, came out in 1972. That same year, artist Ronald King published Bluebeard’s Castle with Fisher's words. More collaborations with King followed for 25 years.
Fisher wrote steadily during the 1970s. He published another book in 1978, The Thing About Joe Sullivan. This book included ‘Handsworth Liberties’. This was a series of sixteen poems written between 1974 and 1977. These poems brought back images of the neighborhood where he grew up. Fisher said he wrote these poems to 'push back the invasion of landscape' linked to his childhood memories.
‘Wonders of Obligation’, written in 1979, showed a new style in Fisher's work. It had more freedom in how it was put together. It also had a clearer and more direct way of describing things and sharing thoughts.
A Furnace and Later Works
In 1980, Oxford University Press published Poems 1955–1980. This helped Fisher's work become more known. Six years later, OUP published A Furnace. This was an ambitious, book-length poem. It was structured like a double spiral. A middle section called ‘Core’ was surrounded by parts that moved 'in' or 'out' from the core. An ‘Introit’ gave background to the work. Like Fisher's other work, it was a mix of images. But here, they came from many different places and times in history. In 1980, Fisher traveled outside Britain for the first time. A Furnace mentions a very old burial site in Brittany, Paris, Trier, Chicago, and Ampurias in Spain.
Another collection, Poems 1955–1987, was published by OUP in 1988. It mostly gathered works that had already been published.
Final Collections
In 1992, filmmaker Tom Pickard made a movie about Fisher. It was called Birmingham’s What I Think With. Fisher wrote a series of poems for the film. These poems described the city where he was born. They were published by OUP in 1994 in a book called Birmingham River. His work with Ronald King continued with Top Down Bottom Up in 1989, and Anansi Company in 1991. A small book, It Follows That, also came out in 1994.
In 1996, Bloodaxe published Dow Low Drop: New and Selected Poems. Dow Low is a hillside near Fisher's home in Derbyshire where stone was taken out. ‘Dow Low Drop’ and the poem ‘It Follows That’ both included parts written in prose. This was a style Fisher had not used since the 1960s.
In an interview in 1998, Fisher questioned if his work really went through different stages. His collected poems, The Long and the Short of It, published by Bloodaxe in 2005, did not put the poems in order by date. Fisher wrote that his way of working on projects over long times, and his different methods, would make a timeline seem wrong.
A later collection, Standard Midland, was published in 2010 by Bloodaxe. It was nominated for the Costa Poetry Award that year. These poems were added to a new edition of The Long and the Short of It (2012). Standard Midland included poems in various styles. There were lighter pieces and more typical works. It also had two mysterious prose poems and another collaboration with Ronald King. A final book, Slakki: New & Neglected Poems, was published by Bloodaxe in October 2016.
