Glyn Maxwell (Glyn Meurig Maxwell) Biography

British poet, born in Welwyn Garden City, educated at Worcester College, Oxford, and the University of Boston, where he studied Creative Writing under Derek Walcott and George Starbuck. In 1988 he commenced work as a freelance publishing editor and literary journalist. Tale of the Mayor's Son (1990), his first collection of verse, gained him wide notice for its idiosyncratically effective handling of narrative and lyric modes. A further volume entitled Out of the Rain appeared in 1992; its title sequence offers the most impressive example of his consistently successful use of longer forms. Much of Maxwell's poetry offers richly particularized but imaginatively detached commentaries on the moral and cultural complexion of contemporary society. His writing frequently combines a fluently conversational tone with unusual patterns of syntax. Among his other publications is Gnyss the Magnificent (1993), which contains three of the verse-plays he has staged at his home in Welwyn Garden City.