Features November 2016
The many masks of William Plomer
On the travels and evolving style of the South African poet.
Said William Plomer to his barber: “A little more off the back, please.”1 “That’s right, sir,” came the reply. “It wouldn’t do to have you looking like a poet.” Apocryphal? Possibly. Yet such drollery has the ring of prophecy. In a letter to John Lehmann in 1931, Plomer confessed, waggishly, that he had “never pretended to be a poet,” not even to himself. Ted Walker (who did look like a poet) observed that Plomer’s demeanor suggested not so much a writer as a magnanimous doctor. Walker was late to the party. As Plomer recalled it: “I have actually been congratulated [by a stranger] on my successful treatment of a difficult case of hydrocele” (the accumulation of serous fluid in...
A Message from the Editors
Support our crucial work and join us in strengthening the bonds of civilization.
Your donation sustains our efforts to inspire joyous rediscoveries.
