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Tower Poetry,
Christ Church,
Oxford, OX1 1DP
Tel: 01865 286591
or contact us >
| Christopher Tower |
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Christopher Thomas Tower (1915-1998), came from a diplomatic family and was educated at Eton and Christ Church, Oxford (reading history from 1934-1937). At Eton he won numerous school prizes for poetry, English literature and allied subjects, and was a founder and first secretary of the Eton College Archaeological Society. These interests first took him to the Middle East where he studied Arabic and Persian. After holding a number of appointments in that area he retired from official life in order to be able to devote more time to his writing. A collection of the Tower family portraits is on view at the Ashridge Business School. He wrote nine illustrated books of poetry, mainly of Persian and Arab legends - a first volume of verse in 1975 (Firuz of Isfahan published by Weidenfeld and Nicolson as were his subsequent titles); A Distant Fluting (1977); Oultre Jourdain (1980); Victoria the Good (1982); Arcesilayus at Tocra (1992). He left a legacy of £5m to be used, by Christ Church, to endow two teaching posts: a Poetry Studentship and a tutorial fellowship, with an associated University Lecturership plus a Junior Research Fellowship in Greek mythology. The benefaction also funded the Christopher Tower Poetry Prize, an annual competition open to sixth-formers. The oration, delivered in 2005, is reproduced here. |
About Tower Poetry
Tower Poetry exists to encourage and challenge everyone who reads or writes poetry. Funded by a generous bequest to Christ Church, Oxford, by the late Christopher Tower, the aims of Tower Poetry are clear: to stimulate an enjoyment and critical appreciation of poetry, particularly among young people in education, and to challenge people to write their own poetry. Creative writing should be a central element in literary education, and learning about writing poetry can help students to think about ways of reading poetry.
Publications
Poems from the 7th Tower Poetry Summer School 2010
Edited by Daljit Nagra and Jo Shapcott
The Twelve contains 56 poems from the 12 young poets who attended the Summer School.