John Tripp Biography

Welsh poet, born in Bargoed, Glamorgan; he spent most of his childhood in Cardiff. He worked for the BBC from 1943 to 1957 and was subsequently a press assistant at the Indonesian Embassy. In 1969 he returned to Cardiff to become a full-time writer. His first collection, Diesel to Yesterday, appeared in 1966, followed by The Loss of Ancestry (1969) and The Province of Belief (1971). These volumes were conspicuously concerned with the aspirations of Welsh nationalism and contained numerous striking dramatic monologues recreating events in Welsh history. More personal and lyrical subject matter became dominant in his work with Bute Park (1971), after which he produced several further volumes, including The Inheritance File (1973), For King and Country (1980), and Passing Through (1984). Collected Poems 1958–1978 appeared in 1978. The social-realist idiom characteristic of much of his verse is frequently enhanced by richly elegiac effects. His angry indignation at economic and environmental decay in South Wales is recurrently tinged with mordant comedy through his use of ironic understatement. He also produced numerous memorable treatments of artists and writers. John Tripp: Selected Poems, edited by John Ormond, was published in 1989. His other works include a collection of short stories entitled Last Day in England (1979). Nigel Jenkins's John Tripp (1989) is a critical and biographical study.