This page includes my own research on poets Elizabeth Gibson Cheyne and her brother Wilfrid Gibson, my great-aunt and grandfather. It also has material about Michael Gibson, author of many books, and one-time art editor on the boys’ comic Eagle. In future I plan to add further items and external links relating to other Gibson family members, such as amateur antiquarian and photographer John Pattison Gibson.
This lesser-known war poem by Wilfrid Gibson was written shortly after the birth of his first child, Audrey, on May 31, 1916. It remains all too relevant today
One-Day-Old
Baby asleep on my arm,
Would that my heart could enfold you,
Cherish you, shelter you, hold you
Ever from harm.
Born in a season of strife
When warring with fire and thunder
Men ... 2023. British poet Elizabeth Gibson Cheyne contributed to the ferment of new ideas about art, religion, poetry and politics in the early twentieth century. She was a suffragist, socialist and freethinker as well as a poet, and her social networks included artists, feminists, reformers and revolutionaries.
2023. Biographical article about Elizabeth Gibson Cheyne published in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography online in July 2023.
This small selection of poems by Elizabeth Gibson (later Elizabeth Gibson Cheyne) is taken from her 1910 collection, From the Wilderness. That self-published book, with its plainer style and more overtly political themes, marks a shift in form and content from most of her previous poetry. My selection gives an insight into her personal stance ... Here are four poems for Armistice Day, by Wilfrid Gibson. Best known for his poems of the First World War, he continued to write about war and its aftermath until the Second World War. For more of his war poems, see Suspense and War Poems
Bacchanal (November, 1918)
Into the twilight of Trafalgar Square
They pour from every ... This weekend sees the final days of an installation, Dazzle at London’s V&A, centred around Wilfrid Gibson’s war poem Suspense.
The installation is one of a series inspired by the use of ‘dazzle’ camouflage used to reduce the risks of submarine attacks on shipping in World War One. Suspense draws on Gibson’s own experience of crossing ... A selection of thirty poems by Elizabeth Gibson Cheyne, written between 1904 and 1913, and selected by Judy Greenway.
Provides some basic information about Elizabeth Gibson, and links to my articles about her. As I continue to research her life and work, new material will be added.
2016. Compares the changing responses to the First World War in the writings of Wilfrid Gibson and his sister and fellow poet Elizabeth Gibson Cheyne. Revised version of article published in Dymock Poets and Friends, No 15.
I have uploaded four more war poems by Wilfrid Gibson and one by Elizabeth Gibson Cheyne. They are among those mentioned in my latest article, ‘”War is a business of innumerable personal tragedies”: Wilfrid Gibson, Elizabeth Gibson Cheyne and the First World War’. (Published this month in Dymock Poets and Friends, No 15, 2016, it ... Wilfrid Gibson’s poem ‘Devilswater’, set to music by James Gillespie, appears on the recently launched Brothers Gillespie CD, Songs from the Outlands. The poem, which refers to places near Hexham, Gibson’s Northumberland hometown, was influenced by the regional folk tales and Border Ballads he heard from childhood; I think Gibson would have loved the Gillespies’ ... Illustrated article by Michael Gibson about his time as Art Editor of Eagle comic in the nineteen-fifties. Published in Eagle Times, Spring 1998.
Michael Gibson’s account of his early days working as Art Editor of Eagle comic in the nineteen-fifties.
Children’s author Michael Gibson remembers his early interest in aircraft, writing his first book while still a schoolboy, and his war work in Gloucestershire as a technical artist and in bomb disposal.
Provides some basic information about Gibson’s life.
Information about copyright and permissions.
A brief selection of anti-war poems plus aphorisms on violence, imperialism and oppression, written between 1904 and 1914.
A selection of poems written by Wilfrid Gibson between 1914 and 1944.
2014. Committed to ‘Art for Life’s Sake’, both poets wrote about suffering, injustice and social responsibility. Similarities and differences in their beliefs show in the form and content of their work. Article from Dymock Poets & Friends, No. 13.
2012. ‘Gautama of India, Jesus of Nazareth, Emerson of Concord, Abdu’l-Bahá of Persia … one God, though called by innumerable beautiful names’, wrote Elizabeth Gibson Cheyne after meeting Abdu’l-Bahá. Talk given at the Commemorative Day celebrating the centenary of Abdu’l-Bahá’s visit to Oxford.
2012.
Discusses Gibson (my grandfather) as poet in the family and poet of family, raising questions about the relationship between poetry and autobiography.
Article from Dymock Poets and Friends, No.11.
2008. Researching an unknown relative, poet and feminist Elizabeth Gibson, raised tricky questions of methodology as well as the challenges of combining family history and academic research. Article from Qualitative Research, 2008:8.
2004. Discusses the close relationship between the sibling poets, and the influences on their artistic and political development. Article from Dymock Poets and Friends, No.3.
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