Gael Turnbull
Gael Turnbull was a Scottish poet and medical practitioner born on April 7, 1928, in Edinburgh, Scotland. He completed his B.A. in science at Cambridge University in 1948 and earned an M.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1951, subsequently practicing medicine in Ontario, Canada. Alongside his medical career, Turnbull began publishing poetry in the early 1950s, influenced by French poets and his admiration for Robert Creeley, with whom he developed a close friendship. He served as editor of Migrant magazine from 1959 to 1960, fostering a platform for emerging poets in America and Britain. Turnbull's notable poetry collections include "A Gathering of Poems, 1950-1980," featuring significant works such as "Twenty Words, Twenty Days" and "Residues: Down the Sluice of Time." His poetry is characterized by a direct, colloquial style that explores human relationships and connections to nature. After his retirement from medicine in 1989, Turnbull continued to write until his death on July 2, 2004, in Herefordshire, England. His contributions to poetry earned him recognition, including awards from Poetry magazine and the Alice Hunt Bartlett Prize.
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Subject Terms
Gael Turnbull
- Born: April 7, 1928
- Birthplace: Edinburgh, Scotland
- Died: July 2, 2004
- Place of death: Herefordshire, England
Biography
Gael Turnbull was born in Edinburgh, Scoutland, on April 7, 1928. He earned his B.A. degree in science from Cambridge University in 1948 before moving to the United States and completing an M.D. degree at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia in 1951. In 1952, he married Jonnie May Draper and began his career as a medical practitioner in Ontario, Canada. Before their divorce in 1983, the couple had three daughters.
While practicing medicine in Canada, Turnbull read and translated several French poets whose work was to have an influence on his own. Starting in 1952, Turnbull began publishing in magazines and small presses some of the poetry he had begun writing in 1950. From 1959 to 1960 he served with Michael Shayer as editor of Migrant magazine, a publication that allowed new young poets in America and Britain both an outlet for their work and a source of constructive, professional criticism. During that time, Turnbull read and came to admire many poets’ work, especially that of Robert Creeley, with whom Turnbull became good friends. Creeley’s handling of authorial voice and commonplace incident intrigued Turnbull and was most like the type of poetry that Turnbull sought to create.
Turbull continued to write poetry and published numerous collections of his verse. In 1983, he published a collection of his works, A Gathering of Poems, 1950-1980. This collection includes two of the pieces on which much of his reputation as a poet is based, “Twenty Words, Twenty Days,” which was originally published as a pamphlet, and “Residues: Down the Sluice of Time.” Both of these long poems bring into focus Turnbull’s direct, colloquial style and relaxed, easy rhythm as well as his interest in people’s relationships to each other, to nature, and to the landscapes in which they live and work.
In 1983, Turnbull married his second wife, Pamela Jill Iles. He practiced medicine until 1989 and continued to publish poetry through 1998, six years before his death on July 2, 2004, in Herefordshire, England. Turnbull was awarded the Union League and Arts Foundation Prize from Poetry magazine in Chicago in 1965 and the Alice Hunt Bartlett Prize.
Noted more for his work with the magazine Migrant, Turnbull was a poet whose work examined human relationships and human life with sympathy and direct, easily accessible language. Perhaps the most notable feature of his poetry is the craftsmanship that makes form inseparable from content.