I first read poems by Thom Gunn in 1962. He was generously represented in A. Alvarez’s Penguin anthology The New Poetry, which had just been published. I had been encouraged by one of my schoolteachers, Peter Hilken, to read the book, and I remember him drawing my attention to Gunn’s selection. Two years later, by luck and coincidence, I met Gunn himself in Cambridge; I was introduced to him by two of my teachers there – Helena Mennie Shire and Tony Tanner – quite independently of one another. This began a friendship of roughly forty years: an unusual friendship since – he living in California and I in Britain – it was mostly based on correspondence, and particularly on news and criticism of one another’s writing. Despite the infrequency of our meetings, there are few people whose company I have enjoyed more. His poetry has meant more to me than that of any poet of my lifetime and I continue to feel a debt to him for the pleasure of reading him, and for the help and advice he gave me as a poet. He was always generous, considerate and, most valuable of all to a young writer, bluntly honest without ever being unkind.
In the preparation of this book I have had help from many people. I’d like to begin by thanking Ander Gunn for illuminating conversations and letters about his brother’s life. My deepest gratitude is due to Thom’s lifelong partner, Mike Kitay, and to the friends who share his house, Bob Bair and Billy Schuessler. They shared it with Thom, too, for several decades. I have stayed with them on a number of occasions, both in Thom’s lifetime and while working on this book, and they have always been extremely kind and welcoming. They have also been generous with their time, talking over their memories with me – often, in Mike’s case, quite sensitive memories that are not easy to share. Mentioning them calls to mind another close friend of Thom’s, August Kleinzahler, who lives two blocks away. Thom introduced me to him in 1986 and I have valued our many conversations in Britain and America ever since. I am also grateful to him for letting me read Gunn’s letters to Douglas Chambers, of which he has copies.
Thanks are also due to Michael Nott for giving me transcripts of Gunn’s letters to Karl Miller, which are held in Emory University Library, Atlanta, Georgia. I have used several libraries to do the research for this book, but the key one has been the Bancroft Library at Berkeley. I would like to thank the staff there for their helpfulness and efficiency, particularly Dean Smith, who has taken a personal interest in the work. I am also grateful to Sally Connolly for directing me to specific items in the Gunn collection there. My research would have been a great deal more laborious if it had not been for Gunn’s bibliographers. Jack W. C. Hagstrom, the author with George Bixby of Thom Gunn: A Bibliography (London: Bertram Rota Publishing, 1979), first visited me in the 1970s and was very kind. He and Joshua S. Odell have now produced a new edition of that bibliography, revised, and expanded by the addition of a second volume (New Castle, DE: Oak Knoll Press, 2013). I would like to express my thanks, both personally and professionally, to both Jack and Joshua.
This book was commissioned for Faber & Faber by Paul Keegan, whose idea it was. I’d like to thank him for his generosity and friendliness, for inviting me to read the Gunn correspondence in the Faber & Faber archive, and for the idea of a selection significantly amplified by quotations from the poet’s essays, letters, readings and conversations. The book has changed a little under my new editor, Matthew Hollis, but I have tried to keep Paul’s original conception in mind. I could name a great many friends and acquaintances with whom I have talked about Gunn to my great profit over the years, but I will confine myself to three. They are all poets themselves and were all admired by Gunn: Dick Davis, Michael Vince and Robert Wells. Gunn’s poetry has been meat and drink to the four of us for more than fifty years and I couldn’t have done without them.