Brian Louis Pearce Poet and Novelist Brian died on April 4th 2006 - his work survives as his memorial
Poetry Fiction Personal information Other works

Brian Pearce’s own poetry includes:

• Selected Poems 1951-73, Outpost, 1977 (out of print)
• Office Hours, Woodruff, 1983
• Gwen John Talking, Second Edition, Stride,1996
• Jack o' Lent, Stride,1991
• Leaving the Corner: Selected Poems 2: 1973-85, Stride,1992
• Thames Listener: poems 1949-89, University of Salzburg, 1993
• "City Whiskers" sequence in The Playing of the Easter Music with Caws and Caseley, Stride, 1996
• The Proper Fuss: homage to place, art and people (with essay and checklist), University of Salzburg, 1996
• [See also Clemo the Poet (Magwood, 2002) below]
• Growling, Stride, 2005 76 pp 1-900152-98-3 £7.50

"He is a deeply traditional English poet but one who has ever been alert to the possibilities of experiment and innovation ... an accomplished public lecturer and a good reader" -William Oxley

"In both matter and manner Pearce is an extender and rebuilder of the past; his experimentation extends rather than rejects the old; his vision values cultural continuity." -Glyn Pursglove, Acumen

"The result is a fine example of the complementary natures of poetry and painting." -Michael Holroyd, of Gwen John Talking

"His work lives uncomfortably, as all great literature does, with unresolved contraries: the formal mastery is a framework for profound enquiries." -David Porter, Arts Media Journal

Read some of Brian Louis Pearce's poetry now:

• Eye
• Vespers
• Self-Akimbo
• Fool
• Café
• Storm on Primrose
• Philosophy: Ground Floor
• The One Not There

His fiction includes:

• Victoria Hammersmith, Second edition, Stride 2001: One day in the life of an elderly woman painter, in which her story and ongoing struggles are revealed piece by piece. Has she made it all up, however, alone in her ageing West London house with its family ghosts, or is it all real, down to every solid-seeming detail? [0-1-900152-72-X]

  "A novel by a poet; and one that employs much fascinating poetic technique ... a most cunningly made minor masterpiece.... It is both mature and masterly. Read it " - Acumen

  "Don't bother with Booker Prize winners. Buy this." - City Life

• London Clay, 1992 : stories and novellas: Bond Street Snatches / Tessa Black-Friars/ Not the Man from Notting Hill / The Cafe in Applegarth Park /A Public Occasion / The Hampstead Affair [0-946699-68-2]

  "Through all the pieces in this collection I was struck by Pearce's compassion for the lost, marginal Everyman and Everywoman he draws ... Pearce builds up, piece by piece, his fragments of urban eulogy, making the everyday exotic and entrancing." - Third Way

  "What is most compelling is Pearce's gentle way with his characters. His narratives are quiet, contemplative affairs which carefully puzzle their way through the fine mesh of puns, literary references, brief thoughts, half-remembered moments. Beneath all the nets of language there is anawareness of deeper veins of spiritual experience." - The Swansea Review

• Battersea Pete, 1994 : Loyalties and betrayals in a London suburb in the sixties. [0-946603-05-7]
• The Servant of his Country, 1994 : A mellow look at National Service in the RAF in the fifties, touching on the sad drama of the East Coast floods of l953. [0-946603-06-5 ]
• The Tufnell Triptych, Stride,1997 : Three interconnecting stories which wryly consider aspects of twentieth century English religious experience. [1-900152-24-X]
• Tribal Customs, Stride, 1997 A postwar tour of Europe is the setting for this study of the differing perceptions of youth and age. Past and present intermingle with the rites of tour relationships and themes of courage and quest, continuity and change of direction. [0-946603- 08-1 ]
• The Goldhawk Variations, Stride, 1999 - The narrator's response to the death of a close friend, a fellow Londoner, becomes a celebration of the creativity engendered by friendship and love. [1-900-152-239]
  'Fascinating and different'. Methodist Recorder
  'A mature book for mature readers, this masterly novel might be called a London symphony'. Alan Gaunt, Reform
• Willesden Paper, Magwood 2002, 70pp 0946603111 £3-95
• St Zacchs, 2003 - A novel centred on Camden's Mornington Crescent, its station closed in the mid-1990's [182pp £7.95 Magwood 0946603-13-8]

About his fiction and poetry see; Emotional Geology: the writings of Brian Louis Pearce,, 1993 : ed. R.M. Loydell, Stride symposium, with interviews etc. [1-873012-63-2]; David Porter's "The AM Interview: Brian Louis Pearce" AM: the Arts media journal (3), Autumn 2002, pp 4-8 (includes photographs by Tricia Porter); Alan Gaunt: Work for the Spirit: The Poetry of Brian Louis PearcePoetry Salzburg Review, (4) Spring 2003, 73-91.

For his lectures, many given at the National Portrait Gallery, London, see:
Varieties of Fervour: portraits of Victorian and Edwardian poets, University of Salzburg Press 1996

Brian Louis Pearce, poet, novelist, lecturer and playwright, MA FLA. FRSA. DipREwas born in Acton, West London, 1933. He was married with one daughter and was a URC elder and lay-preacher. He was a college librarian, tutor in creative writing, examiner, adjudicator,chairman of the Richmond Poetry Group and member of the London Arts Board Writers in Schools Scheme. Member De La Mare, Hopkins, David Jones, Masefield and Palgrave Societies. From October 1997 to January 1998 he acted as honorary librarian of the Theological College of Zimbabwe, Bulawayo. Brian died on April 4th 2006

Plays:

• The Eagle and the Swan (3-Act), Mitre,1966 On the events of autumn 1066. h/b. 60pp o/p
• Shrine Rites, (1-Act), Envoi (distr. Magwood),1990 On Becket and Henry (1m, 1w), 0 948478624 14pp, £2-00.
• The Damien Offices (2-Act), Magwood, 2000 On Fr Damien. 0 946603-09-X 40pp, £4-50.
• The Patmore Triangles, Magwood, 2003 68pp 0946603-17-0 £3.95. On Coventry Patmore.
• The Widow of Gozo, Revised Edition Magwood, 2003 64pp 0946603-15-4 £3.95. On Barbara Greene and public conscience and Hitler's Germany.
• The Chichester Confession, Magwood, 2003 On Bishop Bell (d.1958) who attempted to end WW2 and opposed the bombing of cities. A4 spiral bound, 64pp. 0 946603-16-2 £4-50.
• The Arning Version, Magwood, 2003. 1-Act on tensions involving the doctor who diagnosed Damiens's leprosy. A4 spiral bound, 20pp. 0 946603-18-9 £3-50.
• Scenes From Theatrical Life, Magwood, 2004. A4 spiral bound, 62 pp, 0 946603 197 £3.95 2m,2f in a West London theatre in 1998.

Other publications:

• Seventeen Come Monday: An Anthology Selected from the 1981 Poetry Competition: Jointly edited with Hugh Epstein, 1982 [0-9012190-4-5]
• Palgrave, F.T.: Selected Poems, edited, 1985
• Thomas Twining ... (1806-1895), ("the determined improver"), 1988
• The Fashioned Reed: the poets of Twickenham from 1500, 1992
• The Palgraves and John Murray : letters, edited with an introduction and notes, The Palgrave Society, 1997 [0-9505335-7-2]
• Dame Ethel Walker: an essay in reassessment : Stride, 1997 [1-900-152-25-8]
• The Idea of Nicodemus: Sermons and prayers. Magwood, 2000 [0-946603-10-3]
• ‘Clemo the Poet: study and colloquy’, Magwood, 2002. ISBN 0946603146, £6.50. A study of the poetry of Jack Clemo (1916-1994), the Cornish Methodist writer, blind and deaf before he was 40. A ‘mini-companion’ to Clemo’s poetry, it includes a dozen poems by BLP

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To visit Brian Louis Pearce's church, click here.

This page last revised 6 May 2008.