John Thompson
1938-1976
John Michael Thompson (poet) was born in 1938 in Timperley, in the county of Cheshire in the England. By 1955, he had attended three boarding schools, the last being Manchester Grammar. In autumn 1955 he enrolled in the BA program at the University of Sheffield. He graduated with first class Honours in June 1958. He started National Service immediately. He was assigned to the British Army Intelligence Corps and posted to Germany. After he was discharged, he entered a master’s program in psychology at Michigan State University in East Lansing in 1960. In 1961, he switched his program to a master’s program in comparative literature. Thompson’s first published poem appeared in a student-run periodical in 1961. Its title is “La cloche qui sonne” (“The Ringing Bell”). Of the eight other poems Thompson published between 1961 and 1964, two were English translations from Rimbaud, one of them being of Rimbaud’s “Le bâteau ivre.” One Thompson’s early poems was “The Man in the Wind: An Elegy for Dylan Thomas.” After its initial appearance in a student publication, the poem was republished in New York in a book of tributes to Thomas. Thompson received his PhD in comparative literature (with specialization in French, Italian, and German) on 2 September 1966. Thompson had accepted an Assistant Professorship in the English Department of Mount Allison University, Sackville, New Brunswick. Between 1970 and 1973, Thompson put together his first book, At the Edge of the Chopping There Are No Secrets (1973) and wrote nearly a third of the ghazals of his second, Stilt Jack (1978). On 25 September 1974 the house in Jolicure where Thompson was staying burned to the ground, along with his photographs, books, papers, drafts, and manuscripts. In late 1974 he suffered a breakdown and became a residential patient at the Clarke Institute of Psychiatry in Toronto. He returned to Sackville and started teaching again in autumn term, 1975. He died by ingesting a mixture of prescription pills and alcohol in the early hours of Sunday morning, 25 April 1976.
Predominant New Brunswick Residences:
Sackville
Archival Material
In addition to the fonds listed below, there are papers related to John Thompson's time at Mount Allison which can be searched here. University of New Brunswick Archives & Special Collections has 2 letters from John Thompson in the Robert Gibbs fonds.
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John Thompson fonds
⌄LocationMount Allison University ArchivesRetrieval NumberAccession 7664Date Range of Material1965-1975Extent
6 cm of textual records
2 slides : col. ; 2 x 3.5 cm in mount 4.5 x 4.5 cm
1 reel of audiotape of sound recordingsScope and Content NoteFonds consists of correspondence, poetry and other writing, lists for house repairs, personal documents and some miscellaneous items. The contents of the fonds include records relating to John Thompson’s personal life, his interest in promoting poetry both by his friends and colleagues as well as his own works.
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John Thompson fonds
⌄LocationLibrary and Archives CanadaWebsite/Catalogue RecordRetrieval NumberR11819-0-8-E, LMS-0220Date Range of Material1959-1978Extent
60 cm of textual records
11 photographs
1 audio cassetteScope and Content NoteMost of Thompson's manuscripts were lost in a fire that destroyed his home in 1974. The fonds includes notebooks, manuscripts and typescripts, working drafts and final drafts of poems, plus a cassette tape.
Front cover of "Collected Poems and Translations" by John Thompson
"John Thompson." New Brunswick Literary Encyclopedia, Summer 2013. Accessed 19 May 2023.
See the New Brunswick Literary Encyclopedia entry.