Tony Lopez (born 1950) is an English poet who first began to be published in the 1970s. His writing was at once recognised for its attention to language, and for his ability to compose a coherent book, rather than a number of poems accidentally printed together.Peter Ackroyd, “A future for English Poetry”, Spectator (16 October 1976): 25. He is best known for his book False Memory (The Figures, 1996), first published in the United States and much anthologised.Salt Publishing.
Life
Lopez grew up in Brixton, South London, and was educated at local state schools including Henry Thornton Grammar School. He worked as a freelance writer of fiction, publishing five crime and science fiction novels with New English Library between 1973 and 1976, before going to the University of Essex (1977–80), and then taking up a research studentship at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, where J. H. Prynne supervised his PhD on the Scottish poet W. S. Graham.British Electronic Poetry Centre, Southampton University. He taught briefly at the University of Leicester (1986–87) and the University of Edinburgh (1987–89), and then for twenty years at the University of Plymouth (1989–2009), where he was appointed the first Professor of Poetry in 2000Keith Tuma (ed.), Anthology of Twentieth-Century British & Irish Poetry. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001, 790. and Emeritus Professor in 2009.Plymouth University Staff Directory. He has received awards from the Wingate Foundation, the Society of Authors, the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council and Arts Council, England.Arts Council, England. His poetry is featured in The Art of the Sonnet (Harvard), Anthology of Twentieth-Century British and Irish Poetry (Oxford University Press), Vanishing Points: New Modernist Poems (Salt), The Reality Book of Sonnets (RSE), Other: British and Irish Poetry since 1970 (Wesleyan University Press) and Conductors of Chaos (Picador).Archive of the Now, author page. His critical writings are collected in Meaning Performance: Essays on Poetry (Salt) and The Poetry of W. S. Graham (Edinburgh University Press).
Lopez is married with two grown-up children and lives in Exmouth in Devon.Only More So, University of New Orleans Press.
Bibliography
Snapshots, London: Oasis Books, 1976 Change, London: New London Pride, 1978 The English Disease, London: Skyline Press, 1978 A Handbook of British Birds, Durham, UK: Pig Press, 1982 Abstract & Delicious, Warehorne, UK: Secret Books, 1982 The Poetry of W. S. Graham, Edinburgh, UK: Edinburgh University Press, 1989 A Theory of Surplus Labour, Cambridge, UK: Curiously Strong, 1990 Stress Management, Manuden, UK: Boldface Press, 1994 Negative Equity, Cambridge, UK: Equipage, 1995 False Memory, Great Barrington, MA: The Figures, 1996 Data Shadow, London: Reality Street, 2000 Devolution, Great Barrington, MA: The Figures, 2000 False Memory (new edition), Cambridge, UK: Salt, 2003 Equal Signs, Cambridge, UK: Equipage, 2004 Meaning Performance: Essays on Poetry, Cambridge, UK: Salt, 2006 Covers, Cambridge, UK: Salt, 2007 Poetry & Public Language (co-edited with Anthony Caleshu), Exeter, UK: Shearsman, 2007 Darwin, Dartington, UK: Acts of Language, 2009 Only More So, New Orleans: LA: University of New Orleans Press, 2011; Bristol, UK: Shearsman, 2012 The Text Festivals: Language Art and Material Poetry (ed.), Plymouth, UK: University of Plymouth Press, 2013
References