FORTUNE PRESS WRITERS ON FRIDAY
A short glance by William Cross, FSA Scot
Nicholas Moore
1918–1986
Publisher, Author, Editor, Poet, and Jazz Man.
‘Expansive, Eloquent, Self-conscious’ and Life-Affirming’ says Mark Ford.
Moore was a remarkable and eccentric fellow with a sizable poetry output and much input into the 1940s New Apocalyptics movement. From his schooldays Moore wrote poetry every day and submitted it to various magazines. During his years as an undergraduate at St Andrews and Cambridge Universities, Moore began his own literary review, “Seven”, working there as both editor and co-founder. After his graduation he continued to live in Cambridge, publishing pamphlets as part of the famous “Poetry London” imprint sweeping in the works of Dylan Thomas, George Scurfield, G S Fraser and Anne Ridler. His later collaborators included well known literary figures of the day including John Bayliss, Douglas Newton. Wallace Stevens Alfred Perlès, Julian. Maclaren-Ross, Conrad Aiken, Lawrence Durrell, Christopher Fry Henry Miller,. Saul Bellow, Paul Goodman, Rainer Maria Rilke, and Allen Tate.
Nicholas Moore, pictured above, with his book " The Island and the Cattle" holds a ubiquitous presence in the annals of the Fortune Press volumes including acting as the editor of several important anthologies:
MOORE’S FORTUNE PRESS TITLES INCLUDE
“The New Apocalypse: An Anthology of Criticism, Poems and Stories”
Fortune Press. 1940
“ The Island and the Cattle”
Fortune Press. 1941
“ A Wish In Season”
Fortune Press. 1941
“The Fortune Anthology - Stories, Criticism and Poems.”
Fortune Press. 1942
“The Cabaret, the Dancer, the Gentleman”
Fortune Press. 1942
“Thirty-five anonymous odes”
Fortune Press. 1944
“New Poetry”
Fortune Press. 1944
Design front cover is by Lucien Freud
NB Moore’s “ The Glass Tower”, ( Published by Nicholas & Watson), a selected poems collection from 1944, also appeared with illustrations by the young painter, Lucian Freud – it is a very much sought after and expensive work.
“Atlantic Anthology: New Voices”
Fortune Press, 1945
Moore also wrote as Guy Kelly
“The War of the Little Jersey Cows
Fortune Press, 1945
See Timothy D’Arch Smith 14, 22, 23, 26, 29, 325, 391-393
One contemporary comments that Moore “ faded into obscurity through a series of misfortunes and mysterious circumstances.” Another adds "Amid the scrambled history of neo-modernist revivals, the case for rediscovering Nicholas Moore recurs. Although prominent in the 1940s, Moore was subsequently neglected. Interest revived, along with new publications, in the late 1960s and early 1970s."
Many of his poems are addressed to his first wife Priscilla Craig, with others dedicated to jazz musicians. Moore had a shambolic, nomadic and chaoic home life over several decades from the late 1940s, into the 1950s, with a mixture of family deaths, poverty, martial and work bumps and serious publishing failures, he was also in very poor health, disabled and ultimately, despite some clever attempts aimed to bounce back, he was left in bits, failed and lost. A very sad epitaph to a natural born poet and an imaginative mind.
The Island and the Cattle
Because he sent a head of cattle on
Further than they should go, over the dykes,
Driving them with a switch and a dog beside him:
They sank in the quag, and he,
Frightened because of his sin, disappeared,
Never to be noticed again in that country:
Because he told them, in a letter,
That it was not his fault, he had gone mad,
Driven towards the sea by a vision of birds
Who whistled over his head in the wind,
Leading to a qujet island. He found a girl there,
Lay with her in the rushes, her beauty
Like a star being too much for him.
The wind rose, the morning was grey, his vision gone:
There was no girl, there were no cattle, and it was day.
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