John's ninth collection, Being the Bad Guy, was published by Peterloo in 2007. Fourteen of its poems had previously won prizes in a variety of competitions. Yes, fourteen! Even so, I reckon he was robbed.
'Fattish, baldish, backward-looking and provincial'; his earlier publications include Tennis and Sex and Death and Landscape With Small Humans, both from Peterloo. His Writing Poetry, from A & C Black, deals with such vital questions as : Does modern poetry have to be difficult? Can it rhyme and is it OK to be funny?
(M.P. ed 2008)
It is sad to have to record the death on April 20th 2019 of John Whitworth, a writer well known to many LUPO contributors. He appeared in LUPO’s first two editions in 2008 and occasionally afterwards. His work could be found in a wide range of magazines here and abroad and there are ten collections of his verse, published by Secker & Warburg, Peterloo, Enitharmon, and Kelsay, from Unhistorical Fragments in 1980 to Joy In The Morning in 2016. In addition there was a book of verse for children, The Complete Poetical Works of Phoebe Flood (Hodder 1997), Writing Poetry (A.& C. Black 2001, revised edition 2006)) and a Faber anthology he edited in 2006, Making Love To Marilyn Monroe. For more about John and his work go to Links (John Whitworth) where there is an appreciation by Melissa Balmain, editor of Light, and click on about John to see more on his life and writings in The Hypertexts. (J.B. ed 2019.)