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Sean Noel Bonney (May 21, 1969 – November 13, 2019) was an English poet born in Brighton and brought up in the north of England. He lived in London and, from 2015 up until the time of his death, in Berlin. He was married to the poet Frances Kruk.

His publications include Blade Pitch Control Unit (2005), Baudelaire in English (2008), Document (2009), The Commons (2011), Happiness: Poems After Rimbaud (2011), Letters Against the Firmament (2015), and Our Death (2019). His work also appeared widely in print and online magazines associated with small press poetry and political activism, both in the UK and internationally (his work was frequently translated into other languages). The American critic and poet Keith Tuma declared that "he deserves to be the most popular poet in Britain", and Bonney's work was widely-respected amongst groups of poets, activists and artists in the UK, America, Germany, Greece and elsewhere.

Life and work

Together with other UK-based poets, Bonney's work marks a progression and continuance of the British Poetry Revival, combining with his abiding interest in left-wing radical movements such as British punk, the Angry Brigade, the Red Army Faktion, the American Black Power movement, Surrealism and revolutionary art in general. Living at various points in Hackney, Hastings and Walthamstow, he was a regular attendee at the Bob Cobbing-led Writers Forum workshop, co-founding the reading series Xing the Line with Jeff Hilson, and co-editing the press Yt Communication with Frances Kruk. A sequence of 14 line poems, The Commons, originally subtitled "A Narrative / Diagram of the Class Struggle' combined contemporary uprisings with the voices of the Paris Commune, the Russian Revolution, the english Civil War and "the cracked melodies of ancient folk songs".

Following the completion of his PhD, from 2015 to 2019 Bonney was a postdoctoral researcher at the John F. Kennedy Institute for North American Studies at the Free University of Berlin, conducting a project examining the work of Diane di Prima.

Books

• London Review Bookshop Samplers, No. 2, Face Press, 2019.
• Our Death, Commune Editions, 2019.
• Ghosts, Materials, 2017.
• Cancer: Poems After Katerina Gogou, A Firm Nigh Holistic Press, 2016.
• All This Burning Earth: Selected Writing, Ill Will Editions (online), 2016.
• Letters Against the Firmament, Enitharmon Press, 2015
• Letters: on Harmony, Iodine Press, 2013
• Four Letters, Four Comments, Punch Press, 2012
• Happiness (Poems After Rimbaud), Unkant Publishing, 2011
• The Commons, Openned, 2011
• For the Administration, Crater Press, 2010
• 5 After Rimbaud, Grasp Press, 2010
• Document: Poems, Diagrams, Manifestos: July 7th 2005 - June 27th 2007, Barque Press, 2008
• Baudelaire in English, Veer Books, 2007
• 'from Tracts and Commentaries: A Lecture' (in Pilot: A Journal of Contemporary Poetry, 2007)
• Black Water, Yt Communication, October 2006
• Document: hexprogress, Yt Communication, May 2006
• Blade Pitch Control Unit, Salt Publishing, 2005
• Poisons, Their Antidotes, West House Books, 2003
• Notes on Heresy, Writers Forum, 2002
• The domestic poem, Canary Woof, 2001
• From the book of living or dying, Writers Forum, 1999.
• Astrophil and Stella, Writers Forum, 1999.
• now that all the popstars are dead, damnation publications, 1996
• Marijuana in the breadbin, Doktor Hypno publications, 1992

References

1. Staff, Harriet. "RIP Sean Bonney (1969–2019)". Poetry Foundation. Retrieved 22 November 2019.
2. "Sean Bonney". Poetry Foundation. Retrieved 7 January 2020.
3. Tuma, Keith. "Sean Bonney (January 2007)". Meshworks: the Miami University Archive of Writing in Performance. Retrieved 2019-12-28.
4. "Yt Communication blog". web.archive.org. 2012-06-26. Retrieved 2019-12-06.
5. "Openned - Print - The Commons - Sean Bonney". www.openned.com. Retrieved 2019-12-06.
6. "Sean Bonney". www.jfki.fu-berlin.de (in German). 2016-03-31. Retrieved 2019-12-06.

See also

• British Poetry Revival

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