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In one of his autobiographies, The Last Of England, Ted Walker described how he felt, knowing he “would never have [his] name on a Collected Poems, like the Great Ones” and talked of his Selected Poems as a “titchy but traceable monument” of which he was still proud. I am nevertheless unsure how unfulfilled he thought his early promise had been but in his first five collections, he had written a number of exceptional poems which found an enduring place in many people’s lives.

   His first collection, Fox On A Barn Door, made an immediate impression in 1965 and was followed in a few years by The Solitaries. Ted’s territory was the seashore (boyhood memories of Lancing beach figure prominently) and the downs and country of West Sussex. The work was impressionistic and finely crafted. His skill with the seven syllable line was a trademark.

   Then another voice began to enter. It had anger and edge and seemed to be at odds with the first. It seemed to come from another part of him. Ted was an engaging conversationalist so perhaps argument was inherent in him and was bound, at some stage, to influence the poetry. He was also a very funny raconteur. I only once saw him concede the floor completely to another in conversation. That was to the Welsh poet, Robert Morgan, one lunchtime in The Wilkes Head, a pub down the lane from Ted’s house in Eastergate. Another inveterate storyteller used to holding the centre of the ring, Leslie Norris, looked on. Rob Morgan’s hour had obviously arrived and Ted generously gave it to him.

   Ted gave many readings with Leslie Norris, sometimes also with
Robert Gittings; occasionally with Christopher Fry. Ted and Leslie would set each other exercises to keep the poetic machinery oiled. I remember being at Leslie’s house when Ted rang to inform him that he had, that day, written 136 lines of a new poem, Pig pig, about which he was both excited and confident. The title of his fourth collection, Gloves To The Hangman, was taken from the poem, which concerned the trial and execution of a pig for child murder in l4th century France. The poem was not universally praised and when, with Leslie and Laurie Lee, he was invited to give a poetry reading at the Chichester Festival Theatre, Ted defiantly set Pig pig as his centrepiece.

   In the last two of his five collections with Jonathan Cape, Ted
produced some fine poems. A Celebration for Autumn seems to me to contain the essence of his poetry. Then came the drought. From about 1979 he wrote nothing, or nothing in verse. There was television drama and sit com (who remembers Big Jim and the Figaro Club?). There were short stories and two volumes of autobiography, one telling the heartbreaking story of the death of his first wife, Lorna. There was too, a book on Spain, the country where he lived his last years and for which he had a deep passion.

   At the end, new poems arrived that went into a sixth collection,
Mangoes On The Moon. The old intelligence and craft were there but somehow the gift – and Ted Walker had a superb gift – had left him. His death, at the age of 69, is a loss to English poetry which hopefully may jolt readers into rediscovering or finding for the first time, the work of an original and true artist.

Some troubled sleep it may take to bear
The slump of one less summer - but clean
The sun tomorrow, or the frail rain.