His first collection of poems, Farewell, Aggie Weston [1] (1951) contained his Song of the Dying Gunner A.A.1: Bare Fiction - Charles Causley Poetry Competition 1st... | Facebook". www.facebook.com. Archived from the original on 26 February 2022 . Retrieved 18 January 2017. After its early years, it developed into an international competition. In 2018, the announcements and presentations were hosted by Paul Tyler, Lord Linkinhorne (a patron of the Causley Trust), at the House of Lords. [15] Children’s toys?’Thematically, Farewell, Aggie Weston presents the issues that will concern him throughout his career–the harsh reality of war (“Son of the Dying Gunner”), the tragic deaths of the young and promising (“A Ballad for Katharine of Aragon”), the fascination of foreign landscapes (“HMS Glory at Sydney”), and, most important, the fall from innocence to experience, a sense of which pervades the entire volume. Only Causley’s restless, visionary Christianity is specifically absent from the volume, although with the gift of hindsight one can see the elements which nurtured it in several of the poems about death and war.

The poem comprises six stanzas, four of four lines each, one of three lines, and a final single-line stanza. This enables the poet to build up the picture, reaching a dramatic climax, and the final one-lined stanza a resolution. There is a regular rhyme scheme in that every line ends with consonant rhyme in groups of four, ABAB, CDCD etc. For example, ‘spins’ and ‘suns’ in stanza four; ‘dress’ and ‘grass’ in stanza two. This gives a sense of cohesion, but is so subtly done that it is easy to miss. The University of Exeter: Special Collections (literary and personal papers of Charles Causley; reference EUL MS 50, et al) Charles Causley gallery". Charles Causley Society. Archived from the original on 25 July 2011 . Retrieved 27 June 2011. Charles Causley: Theatre Works (Alan M. Kent, Francis Boutle Publishers, 2013); ISBN 978-1903427774 a b Mole, John. "Causley, Charles Stanley". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (onlineed.). Oxford University Press. doi: 10.1093/ref:odnb/92911. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)Charles Causley (1917-2003) was born and brought up in Launceston, Cornwall and lived there for most of his life. His father died in the First World War when he was only seven and this, as well as his own experiences in the Second World War, affected him deeply. His poems draw inspiration from folk songs, hymns, and above all, ballads. His poetry was recognised by the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry in 1967 and his poetry is popular with everyone, making him, in the words of Ted Hughes, one of the “best loved and most needed” poets of the last fifty years.

The simplicity of the poems in Figgie Hobbin reveals his method more clearly. Their clarity and grace epitomize the transparent style that he has striven for throughout his career. As he has reminded readers, “The mere fact of a poem appearing simple in language and construction bears no relation whatsoever to the profundity of ideas it may contain.” The meaning of many apparently simple poems is rich and complex, just as the underlying meaning of an overtly difficult poem may be crude and banal. The direct and uncomplicated voice that speaks in Causley’s children’s verse is traditional in the most radical sense. Causley has so thoroughly assimilated certain traditions of English verse that he uses them naturally to translate personal experiences into a common utterance. There is no gap between the demands of private sensibility and the resources of a public style. His work achieves the lucid impersonality of folk song or ballad. In “Who?” for example, Causley’s vision of his lost childhood remains equally authentic on either a personal or universal level:

In his own words

He enlisted in the Royal Navy in 1940 and served as an ordinary seaman during the Second World War, firstly aboard the destroyer HMS Eclipse in the Atlantic, at shore bases in Gibraltar and northwest England. Later he served in the Pacific on the aircraft carrier HMS Glory, after promotion to petty officer. International Poetry Competition Results". The Charles Causley Trust. 30 March 2020 . Retrieved 25 August 2020.

Survivor's Leave followed in 1953, and from then until his death Causley published frequently. He worked as a teacher at a school in Launceston, leaving the town seldom and reluctantly, though he twice spent time in Perth as a visiting Fellow at the University of Western Australia, and worked at the Banff School of Fine Arts in Canada, and especially after his retirement which taken early in 1976 [2] was much in demand at poetry readings in the United Kingdom. He made many broadcasts. Congratulations, Claire Dyer! 2015 Charles Causley Poetry Prize winner | Two Rivers Press". tworiverspress.com. Archived from the original on 7 September 2017 . Retrieved 18 January 2017. Sir Andrew Motion to Judge The Charles Causley Poetry Competition 2016". Literature Works SW - Nurturing literature development activity in South West England. 21 September 2016 . Retrieved 18 January 2017. According to the Norton Anthology of Children's Literature, [11] "because his characteristic themes, preoccupations, and freshness of language vary little, it is often difficult to distinguish between his writings for children and those for adults. He himself declared that he did know whether a given poem was for children or adults as he was writing it, and he included his children's poetry without comment in his collected works." [11] The fifth festival in June 2014 was prefaced by the unveiling of a memorial plaque at Cyprus Well (another one later marked his nearby birthplace near St Thomas Church and the River Kensey). That festival also marked the centenary of the start of the First World War with a series of talks on war poetry. A documentary film about Causley's life and work, made by Jane Darke and Andrew Tebbs of Boatshed Films, featured in several versions across the 6th and 7th festivals (2015 and 2016). A shortened version of the full 1990 film, The Poet: Charles Causley, was broadcast on BBC4 as Charles Causley: Cornwall's Native Poet on 1 October 2017.

The Beginnings

That haunted – and haunting – blend of reflections on comradeship, loss, anger, isolation, shame and obligation informs many of his poems drawing upon war in one way or another. Some recount evocative episodes, or sketch insightful portraits, from Causley’s six years of service. Others are a veteran’s musings, up to nearly 50 years on, about ‘aftermath’. The war subtly infused much of his peacetime world and vision. After demobilisation in 1946, he took advantage of a government scheme to train as a teacher at Peterborough. He then worked full-time as a teacher at his old school for over 35 years, teaching for his very final year at St. Catherine's CofE Primary elsewhere in the town, where the National School had been relocated. He twice spent time in Perth as a visiting Fellow at the University of Western Australia, and also worked at the Banff School of Fine Arts in Canada. A bright and bookish child, he devoured the written word wherever he found it – including the romantic novels his mother, Laura, regularly borrowed from Launceston library. Written at the height of British Neo-romanticism, which made personal style and individual voice the preconditions of artistic authenticity, Causley’s “Nursery Rhyme of Innocence and Experience” revels in its impersonality. The poem is anonymous in the sense of the finest traditional ballads–the author’s individuality has defiantly appropriated a universal style. If Blake chose the term song in his “Songs of Innocence and Experience” to denote their radical simplicity and directness of expression versus conventional eighteenth century literary poems, then Causley’s title suggests his deliberate attempt to recapture a straightforward Blakean clarity. The poem concludes this exchange between a returning sailor and the boy to whom he has bought gifts: Causley is one of today’s preeminent writers of children’s poetry, and his children’s verse bears an illuminating relation to his work for adults. “When I write a poem,” Causley has commented, “I don’t know whether it’s for a child or adult.” His children’s book, Figgie Hobbin (1970), for instance, reveals the continuity of his work. Although the poems in Figgie Hobbin are simple in structure and often written from a child’s perspective, they are almost indistinguishable from his adult verse. (It is instructive to remember that Blake published his Songs of Innocence as an illustrated children’s book. It was posterity that reclassified it to the more respectable category of pure lyric.) In these children’s poems he explores his major themes in a fully characteristic way. Indeed they fit seamlessly into the Collected Poems (1975), where they are presented without comment among his adult poems. Moreover, as a group, these tight and polished poems rank high among Causley’s published work, and validate his theory that a truly successful children’s poem is also a genuine adult poem. “What Has Happened to Lulu?,”“Tell, Me, Tell Me, Sarah Jane,” and “If You Should Go to Caistor Town” are among Causley’s most accomplished ballads; “I Saw a Jolly Hunter” is among his best humorous poems. “I Am the Song” has an epigrammatic perfection that eludes classification, and and “Who?” may be the finest lyric he has ever written.