While at school Fenton acquired an enthusiasm for the work of W. H. Auden. At Oxford, his tutor John Fuller, who was writing A Reader's Guide to W. H. Auden at the time, further encouraged that enthusiasm. Auden became perhaps the most significant single influence on Fenton's work.
In his first year at university, Fenton won the Newdigate Prize for his sonnet sequence Our Western Furniture.[3] Later published by Fuller's Sycamore Press, it largely concerns the cultural collision in the 19th century between the United States and Japan. It displays in embryo many of the characteristics that define Fenton's later work: technical mastery combined with a fascination with issues that arise from the Western interaction with other cultures. Our Western Furniture was followed by Exempla, a poetry sequence later published in The Memory of War. The poem is notable for its frequent use of unfamiliar words, as well as commonplace words employed in an unfamiliar manner.
While studying at Oxford, Fenton became a close friend of Christopher Hitchens, whose memoir Hitch-22 is dedicated to Fenton and has a chapter on their friendship. Hitchens praised Fenton's extraordinary talent, stating that he too believed him to be the greatest poet of his generation. He also expounded on Fenton's modesty, describing him as infinitely more mature than himself and Martin Amis. Fenton and Hitchens shared a house together in their third year, and continued to be close friends until Hitchens's death. Fenton read his poem 'For Andrew Wood' at the Vanity Fair Hitchens memorial service.[4]
His first collection, Terminal Moraine (1972) won a Gregory Award.[3] With the proceeds he traveled to East Asia, where he wrote of the U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam and the end of the Lon Nol regime in Cambodia, which presaged the rise of Pol Pot. The poems featured in his collection The Memory of War (1982) ensured his reputation as one of the greatest war poets of his time.[3]
Fenton returned to London in 1976. He was political correspondent of the New Statesman, where he worked alongside Christopher Hitchens, Julian Barnes and Martin Amis.[3] He became the Assistant Literary Editor in 1971, and Editorial Assistant in 1972.[5] Hitchens had formally recruited Fenton to the International Socialists[6] and earlier in his journalistic career, like Hitchens, Fenton had written for Socialist Worker, the weekly paper of the International Socialists.[7] Fenton was an occasional war reporter in Vietnam during the late phase of the Vietnam War, which ended in 1975. His experiences in Vietnam and Cambodia from summer 1973 form a part of All the Wrong Places (1988).[8][9][10] The publication of the book revealed some of Fenton's second thoughts about revolutionary socialism.[11]
In 1983, Fenton accompanied his friend Redmond O'Hanlon to Borneo. A description of the voyage can be found in the book Into the Heart of Borneo.
Fenton has said: "The writing of a poem is like a child throwing stones into a mineshaft. You compose first, then you listen for the reverberation." In response to criticisms of his comparatively slim Selected Poems (2006), he warned against the notion of poets churning out poetry in a regular, automated fashion.
Fenton's partner is Darryl Pinckney, the prize-winning novelist, playwright and essayist perhaps best known for the novel High Cotton (1992).[16]
Musical theatre influence
Fenton has been influenced in his writing by musical theatre, as evidenced in "Here Come the Drum Majorettes" from Out of Danger:
"Gleb meet Glubb.
Glubb meet Glob.
God that's glum, that glib Glob dig.
'Dig that bog!'
'Frag that frog.'
Stap that chap, he snuck that cig.'"[17]
He was the original English librettist for the musical of Les Misérables but Cameron Mackintosh later replaced him with Herbert Kretzmer. Kretzmer credited Fenton with creating the general structure of the adaptation,[18] and Fenton is credited for additional lyrics, for which he receives royalties, as stipulated in his contract.[19]
1984: Children in Exile: Poems 1968–1984Random House, 1984, ISBN978-0-394-53360-5 These poems combined with those from The Memory of War made up the Penguin volume, The Memory of War and Children in Exile; published in the United States as Children in Exile; Salamander Press
1983: You Were Marvellous, selected theatre reviews published 1979–1981[5]
1986: The Snap Revolution
1987: Partingtime Hall, co-author with John Fuller, Viking / Salamander Press, comical poems[5]
1989: Manila Envelope, self-published book of poems[5]
1994: Out of Danger, Fenton considers this his second collection of poems. It contains Manila Envelope and later poems; Penguin; Farrar Straus Giroux; winner of the Whitbread Prize for Poetry[5]
1998: Leonardo's Nephew, art essays from The New York Review of Books[5]
^Barbara Korte Represented Reporters: Images of War Correspondents in Memoirs and ... 2009 - Page 17 "The poet James Fenton, for instance, was an occasional war reporter in Vietnam during the late phase of the war. The reminiscences of his experiences in Vietnam, which form a part of All the Wrong Places, declare a literary intent that ..."
^Douglas Kerr, Eastern Figures: Orient and Empire in British Writing, 2008, page 159 "... at the beginning of a journey that would take him to the war in Vietnam and Cambodia, James Fenton glanced at the ... Fenton in the summer of 1973 was setting out on a journey to see and write about a war in Asia.
^The Listener - Volume 121 - 1989 Page 33 "As a revolutionary socialist, Fenton, in 1975, had no illusions about the Stalinist character of Vietnamese Communism but held the ... Am I wrong, or is All the Wrong Places also Fenton's journey to the end of the revolutionary socialist night"
