Gavin Ewart

Gavin Buchanan Ewart FRSL (4 February 1916 – 23 October 1995) was a British poet who contributed to Geoffrey Grigson's New Verse at the age of seventeen.

Early life
Ewart was born in London to George and Dorothy (née Turner). His father was a successful surgeon at St George's Hospital and his paternal grandfather was James Cossar Ewart, the Scottish zoologist. His two younger sisters, Nancy and Jean were born in 1917 and 1920, respectively.

Ewart educated at Wellington College, before entering Christ's College, Cambridge, where he received a B.A. in 1937 and an M.A. in 1942.

After active service as a Royal Artillery officer during World War II, he worked in publishing and with the British Council before becoming an advertising copywriter in 1952. He lived at Kenilworth Court in Putney, London, and a blue plaque at Kenilworth Court commemorates this.

Poetry
From the age of 17, when his poetry was first printed in Geoffrey Grigson's New Verse, Ewart acquired a reputation for wit and accomplishment through such works as "Phallus in Wonderland", and Poems and Songs, which appeared in 1939 and was his first collection.

The Second World War disrupted his development as a poet, however, and he published no further volumes until Londoners of 1964, although he did write the English lyrics for the "World Song" of the World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts.

From 1964, he produced many collections, which included The Gavin Ewart Show (1971), No Fool like an Old Fool (1976), All My Little Ones (1978), The Ewart Quarto (1984), The Young Pobble's Guide to His Toes (1985), and Penultimate Poems (1989). The Collected Ewart: 1933–1980 (1980) was supplemented in 1991 by Collected Poems: 1980–1990.

The intelligence and casually flamboyant virtuosity with which he framed his often humorous commentaries on human behaviour made his work invariably entertaining and interesting. The irreverent eroticism for which his poetry is noted resulted in W. H. Smith's banning of his The Pleasures of the Flesh (1966) from their shops.

As an editor, he produced numerous anthologies, including The Penguin Book of Light Verse (1980). He was the 1991 recipient of the Michael Braude Award for Light Verse.

Ewart's life and poetry are the subject of a book entitled Civil Humor: the Poetry of Gavin Ewart by Stephen W. Delchamps (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2002).

Personal life and death
In 1956, Ewart married Margo Bennett, and they had two children. An atheist, he was a member of the British Humanist Association.

Ewart died from prostate cancer at Royal Trinity Hospice on 23 October 1995, at the age of 79. Nigel Spivey recalled interviewing Ewart for the Financial Times over a lunch the day before his death, at which 'the main item on the agenda was alcohol, not food'. The following day Spivey received a call from Mrs Ewart: "There are two things you need to know," she said. "The first is that Gavin came home yesterday happier than I have seen him in a long time. The second – and you are not to feel bad about this – is that he died this morning."

Selected bibliography

 * 1939: Poems and Songs
 * 1964: Londoners. Pleasure of the Flesh
 * 1971: The Gavin Ewart Show
 * 1976: No Fool like an Old Fool
 * 1977: Or Where a Young Penguin Lies Screaming
 * 1978: All My Little Ones
 * 1980: The Collected Ewart: 1933–1980
 * 1984: The Ewart Quarto
 * 1985: ''The Gavin Ewart Show: Selected Poems 1939–1985
 * 1985: The Young Pobble's Guide to His Toes
 * 1987: Late Pickings
 * 1989: Penultimate Poems
 * 1991: Collected Poems: 1980–1990

As editor

 * 1980: The Penguin Book of Light Verse

Honours

 * Cholmondeley Award, 1971
 * Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, 1981