James Fenton (b. 1949) grew up in Lincolnshire and Staffordshire and was educated at Repton and Magdalen College, Oxford where he won the Newdigate Prize for his sonnet sequence ‘Our Western Furniture’. This early poem about the cultural clash between 19th century America and Japan contains many of the characteristics of his later work; technical mastery, wide-ranging intellectual interests and a concern for foreign cultures and the problems of Western interaction with them. His first collection, Terminal Moraine (1972) was well received. He then travelled to the Far East where he witnessed the terrible aftermath of America’s withdrawal from Vietnam and the rise of Pol Pot. In 1976 Fenton returned to London and became political correspondent for The New Statesman. The Memory of War (1982), drawing on his experience in the Far East, secured his reputation He then produced Children in Exile in 1984: Poems 1968-1984 and in 1994 Fenton became Professor of Poetry at Oxford.
Fenton uses traditional form to explore contemporary events, combined with images of comedy and violence, as in ‘Out of the East’ and ‘The Ballad of the Shrieking Man’. Fenton explores scenarios of war, turning jaunty rhythms into descriptions of horror. In ‘Jerusalem'the conflicting claims of the city are expressed in alternating, mutually exclusive statements. Alongside these are more personal poems of love and regret such as 'In Paris with You’ which mixes irony and romance.
As a boy Fenton was a chorister, which may have developed his feel for the music of poetry.
