Tony Connor (Tony John Anthony Connor) Biography

British poet, born in Manchester; after leaving school at 14, he worked as a textile designer between 1944 and 1960. In 1971 he became Professor of English at Wesleyan University, Connecticut. His first collection of poetry, With Love Somehow (1962), was followed by numerous others, including Lodgers (1965), In the Happy Valley (1971), The Memoirs of Uncle Harry (1974), and New and Selected Poems (1982), establishing him as one of the foremost poets in the domestic and regional modes ascendant in British writing during the 1960s and 1970s. His work is noted for the structural integrity and unsentimental realism with which he presents personal, anecdotal, and observational subjects. A further collection, Spirits of Place (1986), greatly extends the geographical ambit of his poetry, drawing heavily on Connor's experiences of India in addition to the English and American locales reflected in his previous work; Metamorphic Adventures (1995) is among his most recent volumes of verse. He has also produced translations and written numerous television plays.