Herbert Lomas Biography

British poet, born in Todmorden, West Yorkshire, educated at Liverpool University. He has held lectureships at the Universities of Helsinki and London. His collections of poetry include Chimpanzees Are Blameless Creatures (1969), Public Footpath (1981), which attracted wide notice, Fire in the Garden (1984), and Letters in the Dark (1986). His disciplined free verse often generates unusual rhythms in its shifts between hesitancy and fluency, an effect consistent with the understated but insistent tone of much of his poetry. He is also accomplished in the use of traditional verse forms, which form the basis of Letters in the Dark, an ambitious and often challenging religious meditation whose fifty-two poems range between acutely personal commentary and philosophical speculation. Among his other publications is a work on social and economic factors entitled Who Needs Money? (1972). His highly regarded works as a translator include the anthology Contemporary Finnish Poetry (1992).