Poet Nathaniel Tarn to read from his works
March 8, 1978
Nathaniel Tarn, whose passion for poetry incited him to abandon a career in anthropology, will read from his works at 4 p.m. Monday, March 13, in the Revelle Formal Lounge at the University of California, San Diego.
Tarn, who will be the final reader in the winter New Poetry Series, pursued his scientific studies for a decade during investigations in Guatemala and Burma. He was lecturer in South East Asian Studies at the University of London from 1960 to 1967 when the pull of the literary world could no longer be denied.
Having won first prize in 1963 at the Cheltenham Festival, at that time the United Kingdom's most distinguished poetry competition, Tarn compiled a book of his poems, "Old Savage/Young City," which was published by Jonathan Cape (London) in 1964 and by Random House in the United States in 1965. He resigned his post at the University of London in 1967 and became general editor of Cape Editions and founding director/ editor of Cape-Goliard under whose aegis a choice and diverse group of books has been published.
Tarn was born in Paris in 1928 and was educated in France, Belgium and England, where he received an Honours M.A. from Cambridge (1948). He holds an M.A. and a Ph.D. (1957) from the University of Chicago.
Among his books of poetry are "The Beautiful Contradictions" (Cape-Goliard, 1968), "A Nowhere for Vallejo" (Random House, 1971), "Lyrics for the Bride of God" (New Directions and Cape, 1975) and translations including "The Heights of Macchu Picchu" by Pablo Neruda (Cape and Farrar, Straus). His articles and poems have appeared in a number of British, American and European magazines. Tarn has done many recordings as well as broadcasts and public readings from his works.
He taught at SUNY-Buffalo and Princeton University and since 1971 has been professor of comparative literature at Rutgers University. He has lived since 1973 in New Hope, Pennsylvania.
The New Poetry Series is a project of the Archive for New Poetry and is sponsored by the UC San Diego Departments of Literature and Visual Arts and the University Events Office. All poetry readings are taped and become a part of the archive.
The Archive for New Poetry is located on the eighth floor in the Special Collections section of the UC San Diego Central University Library. For information about the archive or about listening to tapes or accessing printed materials, call Michael Davidson, director of the archive, at 452-2533.
For information contact: Barbara Ann Firger, 452-3120
(March 8, 1978)