Collected Poems

A once neglected poet with many distinguished admirers, Cameron's continuing revival is the product of the editors' shared transatlantic enthusiasm.

Norman Cameron: A Scot, the son of an army chaplain, Cameron was born in Bombay in 1905. He was brought up in Edinburgh and won a scholarship to Fettes College, after which he went to Oriel College, Oxford. Three times married, but childless, he seems to have had his share of emotional problems, as the undercurrents of his poems would suggest. Late in life he was psychoanalysed, and then became a Roman Catholic. He served with British forces in Austria during the war and in 1947 returned to London and advertising, where he was famous for creating the Horlicks drink “Night Starvation” campaign. His friend Dylan Thomas nicknamed him, tongue in cheek, "Normal" Cameron. He died aged 48, in London, of a cerebral haemorrhage. His collected Rimbaud translations were published by Anvil in 1994 as A Season in Hell and other poems. His biography by Warren Hope was published in 2000. Warren Hope: Warren Hope was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1944. He is the author of several books, including Adam's Thoughts in Winter (2001), which includes a selection of poems from the years 1970 to 2000, and Moving In (2004). He is also the biographer of Norman Cameron (Norman Cameron: His Life, Work and Letters, 2000) and the author of critical studies of Robert Frost, Seamus Heaney, Philip Larkin, and George Orwell. Jonathan Barker: Jonathan Barker has worked as Deputy Director of Literature for the British Council and Librarian of the Arts Council Poetry Library. He has contributed critical articles and reviews to a number of poetry journals and has edited bibliographies of contemporary poetry, poetry anthologies, an edition of the poems of W.H. Davies and a book of critical essays on Edward Thomas.