Christopher Middleton, long a resident of the USA, is one of Britain's finest poets. He was writing (not for publication) his 'Nocturnal Journal' during the two years prior to his retirement from the University of Texas at Austin, where he had taught German and Comparative Literature since 1966. The journal appears here in conjunction with conversations tape-recorded by Marius Kociejowski in London during October 2002 and June 2003. In both areas Middleton attends eloquently to his concerns as poet, translator, and essayist: values intrinsic and peculiar to poetry, the fundamental human aptitude (and craving) for aesthetic expression, and the reading of sign-systems usually deemed haphazard (e.g., a Turkish sea-mew, a soccer match, the aprons of waiters, rubbish in the Paris Metro, and a fresco in Cappadocia). Also included here, by way of introduction to the volume, is a brief but entertaining reminiscence of his first encounters with Christopher Middleton by Marius Kociejowski.
Author Biography:
Christopher Middleton studied at Oxford and then taught at the University of Zurich, at King's College, London, and finally as Professor of Germanic Languages at the University of Texas, Austin. He has published translations of Robert Walser, Nietzsche, Holderlin, Goethe and many contemporaries, receiving several awards, including the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize and the Schegel-Tieck Translation Prize. His poems, essays and selected translations are all published in the UK by Carcanet Press; his poems are published in the USA by Sheep Meadow Press. His most recent publications are: Of the Mortal Fire (poetry, Sheep Meadow, 2003), Crypto-Topographia (prose, Enitharmon Press, London, 2002), The Word Pavilion and Selected Poems (Carcanet / Sheep Meadow, 2001), Jackdaw Jiving: Selected Essays on Poetry and Translation (Carcanet, 1998), Faint Harps and Silver Voices: Selected Translations (Carcanet, 2000). Christopher Middleton lives in Austin, Texas. Marius Kociejowski was born in 1949. He lives in London, where he works as an antiquarian bookseller. His Greville Press booklet Coast won the Cheltenham Prize in 1991. He has subseqently published two collections of poems with Anvil Press Poetry, London: Doctor Honoris Causa (1993) and Music's Bride (1999), and a book of travels, The Street Philosopher and the Holy Fool - A Syrian Journey (Sutton Publishing, 2004).
