Prize-winning poet Thom Gunn dies

Thom Gunn, a prize-winning British-born poet who explored contemporary California counterculture in a variety of poetic forms, has died, his partner said today. He was 74.

Gunn died in his sleep on Sunday night at his home in San Francisco, his adopted city for 40 years, said Mike Kitay, his partner of 52 years.

Kitay said he believed Gunn died of a heart attack, but a this had yet to be officially confirmed.

“I thought he was possibly the best living poet in English,” said Wendy Lesser, an author and editor of the literary journal The Threepenny Review.

“Unlike most poets, he was equally at home in rhyme and non-rhyme, in free verse and patterned rhythms.”

Gunn was born in Gravesend, Kent, on August 29, 1929. His parents, both journalists, divorced when he was nine. His mother committed suicide when he was 15.

Gunn, who graduated from Trinity College Cambridge, in 1953, was part of a group of British poets known as “The Movement” that included Philip Larkin, Kingsley Amis and Donald Davie.

He was recognised early as one of post-war Britain’s most promising young poets, publishing his first book, Fighting Terms, when he was 25.

In 1954, Gunn moved to California with Kitay, an American he had met at Cambridge who inspired many of Gunn’s love poems.

Gunn taught at the University of California, Berkeley from 1958 to 1966 and from 1973 to 1990, but gave up a tenured position because he couldn’t stand attending department meetings.

He received many literary awards: the Forward Prize, England’s largest poetry prize, in 1992; a $369,000 (€311,800) MacArthur Fellowship in 1993; and the prestigious David Cohen British Literature Prize last year.

Gunn remained an “outlaw” in spirit, Kitay said.

He wore leather when he lectured, identified with biker culture, experimented with LSD, and wrote poems extolling the gay bathhouse culture of the 1970s.

Members of the literary community praised Gunn’s work as a poet.

Robert Pinsky, a former US poet laureate and professor at Boston University, said: “His poems attain a cool clarity, an ability to be morally discerning but not judgmental – amused but engaged.”

Poet Philip Levine said: “He had such an affinity for the odd man out, the non-belonger, the despised, the downtrodden. He had this sympathy and insight, and he really humanised these people and made them loveable in his poems.”

Gunn is survived by Kitay and his brother, Ander, who lives in Cornwall.