Cornwall, like the rest of the country, was struggling with the repercussions of the First World War. His early life in Launceston was far from idyllic. His time spent with the Royal Navy during the 1940s gave him some opportunity to see the world beyond the Cornish coast and to spend time with his other great love – the sea. (You can hear more of Causley’s poetry HERE )Ĭausley’s work doesn’t focus exclusively on the county of his birth however. I shall meet him on the road from Marazion Much of his work has a Cornish flavour, sometimes nostalgic, sometimes wistful, whimsical even but always celebrating Cornwall’s history, legends and its elemental landscape.Īnd careless, like tide-marks, the hedges,Ī red face and straw-coloured hair has he: He called Cornwall ‘the granite kingdom’ and always recognised and revelled in its unique qualities. Causley’s poetry is simple, some say naïve, and yet it is often a movingly direct expression of his life, his feelings, laid out on the page.įirst and foremost Causley was a poet of place. He wrote poems about his parents’ marriage and the life of his grandfather Richard Bartlett, he wrote about his friends and his views on religion. From his childhood remembrances to his dramatic experiences in the Second World War Causley shared it all.
Credit: In his own wordsĬausley famously never wrote an autobiography, he said that the truth about his life was there already for everyone to see in his poetry. Yet through the prism of his poetry there emerges a vibrant world vividly observed and a life keenly felt. An only child, who never married, he spent many years nursing his elderly mother and left his Cornish home only rarely.
A private man, he became a schoolteacher in the same school that he himself attended and he lived in a cottage just a few metres from the one in which he was born. But despite initial appearances his was anything but an inactive or uneventful life.Īt first glance Charles Causley’s life may seem quiet, ordinary, perhaps even hum drum. Considered one of the most important British poets of his generation, Charles Causley was born, lived and died in the small Cornish town of Launceston.
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