We are greatly saddened to share the news that the poet Douglas Dunn died on Friday 16 October, a week before his 84th birthday. Born in Inchinnan, Renfrewshire, he qualified as a librarian and went to work in Ohio. He returned home because of the Vietnam War, and after working as a librarian in the Chemistry department at Glasgow, applied to study English at the University of Hull. He graduated with a First. He worked at the University Library under Philip Larkin, and lived with his wife on Terry Street, off Beverley Road. ‘Terry Street’ became the title of his first collection, which won the Scottish Arts Council Book Award and the Somerset Maugham Award in 1969. He was Writer in Residence at the University of Hull 1974-75. Other poetry volumes followed, and in 1982 he edited ‘Hull, A Rumoured City’. Dunn’s first wife, Lesley, Senior Keeper at the Ferens Art Gallery, died young from cancer in 1981: her loss inspired ‘Elegies’ (1985), which won the Whitbread prize. He remarried and returned to Scotland, becoming Professor of English at St Andrews in 1991, and then Director of its Scottish Studies Centre. He was awarded honorary Doctorates by the Universities of Dundee, Hull and St Andrews, and an OBE in 2003.
His association with Larkin and his support for the Brynmor Jones Library will long be remembered. He presented the library with the Improved Albion Press (1833), used to print the programme for the opening of the Philip Larkin Suite, which he inaugurated in 1987. (This was the home of the University Archives before the Hull History Centre was built.)
I knew Douglas Dunn in St Andrews in 1990s. As a postgraduate in Art History, I used to attend a poetry group that he ran on campus: it was a great experience, which I found very constructive for my work. He was encouraging, interested and gave useful feedback, even if one didn’t necessarily agree on all points. It was at a reading in St Andrews that I heard him read ‘Winkie’, about the WW2 war heroine pigeon, whom he had seen (stuffed) in Dundee Museum.
I recall, too, a pair of the ducks who used to amble around the town during breeding season and pause outside a fish and chip shop, looking for scraps. The ducks were gently quacking; I quacked back, and so we had a 2-way conversation in duck; then Douglas walked past and stopped, with a very quizzical look! I later explained that it wasn’t quite as bizarre as it looked!
I last saw him briefly in 2017, as he was going into Hull Central Library for a City of Culture event. “Fancy seeing you here!” – and I explained I’d moved back to Hull.
Dr Marianne M Gilchrist