| Gael Turnbull | |
| Birth Date: | 7 April 1928 |
| Birth Place: | Edinburgh, Scotland |
| Death Place: | Herefordshire, England |
| Nationality: | Scottish |
| Alma Mater: | Christ's College, Cambridge University of Pennsylvania |
| Occupation: | poet, physician |
| Known For: | A Gathering of Poems" 1950—1980, There are Words: Collected Pems |
Gael Turnbull (7 April 1928 – 2 July 2004) was a Scottish poet who was an important figure in the British Poetry Revival of the 1960s and 1970s.
Turnbull was born in Edinburgh and grew up in Northern England and in Canada, where he moved with his parents at the beginning of World War II. He studied Natural Sciences at Christ's College, Cambridge, and graduated in Medicine from the University of Pennsylvania in 1951.[1] As a doctor and anesthetist, he worked in Ontario; London, England; Ventura, California; Worcester; and Barrow-in-Furness.
His poetry first appeared in a book in Canada in 1954. Trio, an anthology of poems by Turnbull, Eli Mandel and Phyllis Webb, was published by Raymond Souster's Contact Press.[2] His poems also appeared in Origin, Cid Corman's magazine.
In 1957, Turnbull started Migrant Press, one of the first British-run presses to focus on poets in the modernist tradition. His work was featured in the groundbreaking Revival anthology (1969). His own books include A Gathering of Poems 1950-1980 (1983) and Rattle of Scree: Poems (1997). He was also published in the anthologies The New British Poetry (1988), (1999) and Anthology of Twentieth-Century British and Irish Poetry (2001). He was a significant presence on the 'late modernist' poetry scene, as evidenced by his extensive correspondence with poet Roy Fisher.[3]
He returned to Edinburgh after he retired from medical practice in 1989. In this city, he worked on what he termed kinetic poems; texts for installation in which the movement of the reader and/or of the text became part of the reading experience. He died on a visit to Herefordshire of a sudden brain hemorrhage.
In 2006, Turnbull's collected poems, There Are Words, were published by Shearsman Books.[4]