Deans Yard, 17A, London SW1P 3PB, United Kingdom
William attended Westminster School.
Holywell St, Oxford OX1 3BN, United Kingdom
William read English at New College, Oxford.
Deans Yard, 17A, London SW1P 3PB, United Kingdom
William attended Westminster School.
Holywell St, Oxford OX1 3BN, United Kingdom
William read English at New College, Oxford.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0856463051/?tag=2022091-20
1985
William Cookson was born on May 8, 1939, in London, United Kingdom. Cookson's father, George, a schools inspector, was the author of two books of poems, and founder of the magazine English. By the time William was born, he had retired, and he died when his son was just 10. William's mother, Rachel Pelham Burns, also published poems and had studied with the pianist Cortot. During the war, the family lived in Surrey, a county to which William had a special attachment.
William attended the Hall preparatory school, in Hampstead, and Westminster School, before reading English at New College, Oxford.
It was Ezra Pound, with whom William Cookson had begun to correspond at an early age, who became his literary father figure - and who he called the true founder of Agenda. In the autumn of 1958, while on holiday in Italy with his mother, Cookson met Pound; the following January, he produced the first issue of Agenda, in a pamphlet form that differed from the mature magazine not only in appearance but in being entirely Poundian in content and substance.
Many of the later difficulties of Cookson's editorship were due to this beginning, and to his loyal and stubborn championing of Pound - even in the face of Pound's fascist aberration, by which time Cookson had become a socialist. His second mentor, David Jones, who was to design the lettering for the cover of the mature Agenda in 1961, had also been drawn both to communism and fascism after the first world war.
In the early years, Cookson kept Agenda going by working as an English teacher. In 1971, the poet Peter Dale became his associate editor and co-editor in 1981. All went well for the magazine, which became a charitable trust until its arts council subsidy was withdrawn.
He had become incapable of subsidizing both the magazine and his family with other earnings, and the effects of these increasingly desperate struggles made it impossible for Dale to continue. Issues became irregular, despite the help of many friends, repeated attempts to raise money, and the new co-editorship of Patricia McCarthy. Cookson lived for poetry, and for his magazine.
He published the work of new poets, overlooked or neglected poets, and unknown poets from faraway places. Especially popular among readers were his special editions devoted to the work of an individual poet, such as William Carlos Williams, Hugh MacDiarmid, Eugenio Montale, and Osip Mandelstam, and it was considered a high honor among poets to be selected as the subject of an Agenda special edition.
Also favoring poetry in translation, he created special issues on works of specific foreign cultures, such as Romanian or Turkish, thus ensuring maximum exposure among the devotees of Agenda.
Cookson also wrote poetry himself that was collected in the volumes "Dream Traces: A Sequence," "Spell: A Sequence, and Vestiges." He also wrote "A Guide to the Cantos of Ezra Pound."
William Cookson is widely known as the founder and editor of the poetry magazine Agenda, regarded by many, including the critic Donald Davie, as the best literary periodical of its kind in Britain. He was widely considered to be one of the finest literary editors of poetry in the 20th century.
William Cookson pursued a lifelong mission to discover, publish, and critique high-quality poetry wherever it could be found.
The esteem William enjoyed derived not only from his considerable intellect but from the fact that his decisions were never influenced by fashion or marketability. Although he was always on the look-out for new talent, Cookson would publish only what he considered to be of enduring quality.
He was always sure of his own judgment, and once turned down a batch of Seamus Heaney's poetry - though he also dedicated an issue of Agenda to Heaney.
A gracious and sociable man of great courtesy, Cookson was unwavering in his commitment to poetry; and for a poet to be the subject of a special issue of Agenda was among the highest of accolades.
Patricia McCarthy described him as "a man who sacrificed his life for poetry and was perhaps the best, most single-minded editor of our day."
In 1982, Cookson had married Margaret Craddock. Five years later, their daughter Emma was born.
