POET AND PROFESSOR
‘The spring recoils upon us like a myth…’ The Professor, Kenneth Allott
We would meet occasionally, by chance,
outside lectures or tutorials,
near the bus stop by the Philharmonic Hall,
Professor Ken Allott in from the suburbs,
me from various damp, cold flats in Toxteth.
He would always speak and would always ask
about my writing. ‘A young man’s game,’ he’d say,
smiling. He was in his fifties then,
his two volumes out of print. He was
a good teacher – and a fine poet.
Ah, if I had seen then how fine – a craftsman,
witty, lyrical, ironic – what time
youth would have spent with age to learn about
our art, walking together up Hope Street.
‘Heaven is full of clocks which strike all day.
It is to music we are put away.’
arthur kemelman
January 27, 2014I like your tribute to Prof. Allott. As you know, as a student at the department I also encountered both Prof. Allott and his wife, Miriam. I didn’t realize that he was a poet. They were both very nice people and enjoyable lecturers.
David Selzer
January 27, 2014They were indeed. Sadly, Miriam died last year – https://alumni.liv.ac.uk/NetCommunity/SSLPage.aspx?pid=1136&frcrld=1&utm_source=alumninewsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=alumni-newsletter-april-2011+&erid=1172170. Ken was seen in the Thirties as a peer of Auden et al. I’d hoped you’d like the piece.
John Huddart
January 29, 2014As for you, and like you, Kenneth Allott is an inspirational figure. A lost voice to poetry when he became a teacher, and made that decision you hint at – to leave it to the younger men and women. I have often thoughT how much better his work can be, than Auden’s and the rest.
It was after a performance of Chekhov’s The Seagull in which I played Trigorin, the popular, but aimless novelist, that he spoke to me on the stairs in the English Department. ‘John’, he said, ‘you should be an actor, you haven’t read widely enough to be a teacher’.
I struggled for some time with the compliment, because a teacher I became, and, if he was right, an ignorant one. Like Trigorin, I lacked decisive courage and didn’t dare to dream about the stage. But writing – the elephant in the room of the anecdote – has become a small part of my life.
But there he was, the thirties poet, serious smoker, professor of modern English literature, and a teacher confessor to us all. His advice was etching its way in.
Never far from a packet of Players Navy Cut, he believed TB had given him immunity from cancer. It was not to be. He died in 1973 – the year I qualified as a teacher.
Clive Watkins
March 21, 2018He was a fine poet and a fine scholar. I had read Law and did not have the good fortune to meet him, though I did later meet his wife. Another story… I was glad to read your poem, David.
David Selzer
March 21, 2018Thank you, Clive. He was also an accomplished lecturer and teacher – as was his wife, Professor Miriam Allott.