A Strong Song Tows Us

Basil Bunting, Britain's greatest modernist poet, led an extraordinary life. He was born in 1900 in small mining village in Tyneside, where he received a largely Quaker education and, at the age of 13, met the love of his life. His young life was hindered after he left school and went straight to prison as a conscientious objector. In the early twenties he worked in Paris as, variously, an artist's model and road mender, before being rescued from another stretch in prison by Ezra Pound and Ford Maddox Ford.