Terence Tiller (Terence Roger Tiller) Biography

British poet, born at Truro in Cornwall, educated at Jesus College, Cambridge. After lecturing at Cambridge he held an appointment at Fuad University in Cairo from 1939 to 1946. He subsequently became a highly regarded and prolific writer and producer for BBC radio; his more notable achievements included an adaptation of The Vision of Piers Ploughman (broadcast 1980; published 1981). Poems (1941), his first collection of poetry, was followed by The Inward Animal (1943) and Unarm, Eros (1947), which are generally thought to contain his best work; his experiences of Egypt during the war gave rise to lyrics of great formal accomplishment and sensuously precise imagery which drew upon the tensions latent in his ambivalent sense of himself as a non-combatant expatriate. Reading a Medal (1957), Notes for a Myth (1968), and That Singing Mesh (1979), which carried a preface announcing his intention to cease writing poetry, sustained his reputation for highly wrought verse of elegant complexity. Among his other works is Confessio Amantis (The Lover's Shrift) (1963) by John Gower, which he translated and edited.