Poet, Writer, Editor, and Translator Val Warner Dies at 74

The Guardian's Patricia Craig reports on the death of English poet, translator, scholar, writer, and editor Val Warner, who authored the collections Under the Penthouse (1973), Before Lunch (1986) and Tooting Idyll (1998), all from Carcanet. "Not a lyric poet, she had an individual style," writes Craig. Warner's poems "are often abrupt, sardonic, allusive and disabused." Warner also famously edited a collection of poems and prose by the long-forgotten Charlotte Mew. More:

Between 1977 and 1988, Warner held the posts of creative writing fellow at the University College of Swansea, and writer in residence at Dundee University. Once she had returned to London, she became an active member of PEN International, working assiduously on behalf of writers in prison. She enjoyed a close friendship with the novelist Francis King (to whom her last book is dedicated), which lasted until his death in 2011. She was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1998.

During the last years of her life, Warner became increasingly eccentric and reclusive. She moved into a terraced house in Hackney where she lived without heating, hot water, adequate furnishings or cooking facilities. She gave up poetry and devoted herself to writing, simultaneously, 10 or so novels, none of which was ever completed. They went through many draft versions and revisions and generated a vast array of notes, which were printed out and dispersed in piles all over the house. She was utterly indifferent to ordinary home comforts or her own well-being.

The full obituary is at The Guardian.