James Kirkup

James Kirkup (1918 - 2009) was a prolific poet and translator. His work includes several dozen poetry collections, six volumes of autobiography and over a hundred monographs of original work and translations. He was a skilled writer of haiku and tanka. Amongst his honours, James Kirkup held the Atlantic Award for Literature from the Rockefeller Foundation in 1950, became a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1962, won the P.E.N. Club Prize for Poetry in 1965 and was awarded the Scott-Moncrieff Prize for Translation in 1992. In 1997 he was presented with the Japan Festival Foundation Award and invited by the Emperor to the New Year Poetry Reading at the Palace in Tokyo. James Kirkup lived in Andorra, until his death in May 2009.