Robin Gilbert

Robin Gilbert was born in Oxford three days after the end of the Second World War.  He wrote his first poem, over which a veil is discreetly drawn, at the age of five and has been writing, intermittently and not at all prolifically, ever since.  In 2006, he (self-) published a volume of poetry My Own Dragon, and in recent years has been a regular participant at Buzzwords, Holub and the Poetry Society of Cheltenham. In 2010, he edited and published The Poetry of P.A.T.O’Donnell. (O’Donnell, who was an important influence on Robin’s early writing, died in 1972, and his two volumes of poetry had been out of print for more than fifty years.)  He has also edited Prospero’s Trilby, the youthful poems (1994-1999) of his son Sam Gilbert, which will be published in February or March 2011.  A further collection of Robin’s own work is projected for later in the year, under the provisional title of Prose & Cons.  A classicist and Roman historian manqué, Robin worked for GCHQ for more than three decades, most recently in International Relations.  He has lived in Bentham, beneath Crickley Hill, since 1972.  Among his interests are family history, cluing crosswords, amateur photography and collecting books, far too few of which he finds time to read.