Lee Harwood (Lee Travers Rafe Harwood) Biography

British poet, born in Leicester, educated at Queen Mary College, University of London. He has worked as a librarian, bookseller, and post office worker and has lectured periodically at New College, San Francisco, since 1985. The White Room (1968) was his first substantial collection of poetry. Subsequent volumes include H.M.S. Little Fox (1975), All the Wrong Notes (1981), Monster Masks (1985), Rope Boy to the Rescue (1988), Crossing the Frozen River (1988), and In the Mists: Mountain Poems (1993). The surrealist impenetrability evident in his earlier verse was superseded during the 1970s by a more fluently accessible manner. His sustained concern with recreating the immediacy of perception gives rise to the intense use of local imagery that characterizes much of his work; Brighton, Snowdonia, Italy, and New York are among the locations he has drawn on in poetry notable for the range and imaginative flexibility of its sense of place. He has also published several collections of short stories, which include Dream Quilt (1985).