Tom Paulin | |
|---|---|
| Born | January 25, 1949 Leeds, England |
| Occupation | Poet, critic, academic |
| Language | English |
| Alma mater | |
| Period | 1970s–present |
| Notable works | The Invasion Handbook, A State of Justice, The Strange Museum, Liberty Tree |
| Spouse | Munjiet Kaur "Giti" Khosa |
| Children | 2 sons |
Thomas Neilson Paulin (born 25 January 1949 [1] ) is a Northern Irish poet and critic of film, music and literature. He lives in England, where he was the G. M. Young Lecturer in English Literature at Hertford College, Oxford. In the 1990s and 2000s, Paulin was noted for his frequent appearances on British television as a commentator, particularally on the programme Newsnight Review .
Paulin is the eldest of three boys and was born in Leeds, England in 1949 to a Belfast-born mother, a GP who had worked in London hospitals during the Blitz, and a father from Tynemouth who became a headmaster in Belfast, Northern Ireland. [1] The family moved to Belfast when Paulin was four, and he grew up immersed in discussions of politics, history, and ideas, as his parents were moderate unionists and supporters of the Northern Ireland Labour Party. [2] [1] His childhood was shaped by post-war stories, his father’s military experiences, and the legacy of the World War II, including an aluminium school built from wartime scrap with houses named after Ulster field marshals. Paulin’s early education was rigorous but uneven: he attended a large Victorian primary school described as grim, followed by a more stimulating secondary education under his father’s headmastership, where he was encouraged to explore literature and poetry. Belfast’s intellectual and cultural life in the 1960s, including exposure to contemporary poets such as Seamus Heaney, Derek Mahon, and Michael Longley, and the city’s political debates, further influenced him. He also engaged with socialist and Trotskyist ideas as a teenager, reading writers like Isaac Deutscher and joining the Trotskyist Socialist Labour League., [3] though he eventually recognised the primacy of national identity in Northern Ireland, a view which clashed with Trotskyist viewpoints. [1]
Paulin was educated at Annadale Grammar School, Hull University and Lincoln College, Oxford. [3]
From 1972 to 1994 he worked at the University of Nottingham, first as a lecturer and then as a Reader of Poetry. In 1977 he won the Somerset Maugham Prize for his poetry collection A State of Justice and later became a literary critic with work such as Minotaur: Poetry and the Nation State (1992).[ citation needed ] He has championed the work of William Hazlitt and took part in the campaign which succeeded in having Hazlitt's gravestone refurbished.[ citation needed ]
Paulin is considered to be among a group of writers from a Unionist background "who have attempted to recover the radical Protestant republican heritage of the eighteenth century to challenge orthodox concepts" of Northern Irish Protestant identity. [4] His passionate arguments and desire for a political poetry reflect the influence of John Milton, according to critic Jonathan Hufstader, though his outrage "often consumes itself in congested anger". [5]
Paulin is most widely known in Britain for his appearances on the late-night BBC arts programmes The Late Show , Late Review and Newsnight Review .
Following the success of the Field Day Theatre Company's tour of Brian Friel's play Translations in late 1980, the two founding directors, Friel and Stephen Rea, decided to make Field Day a permanent enterprise. To qualify for financial support from both the Northern Ireland and the Irish governments, they expanded the governing board from the original two members to six: Friel, Rea, Paulin, Seamus Deane, Seamus Heaney and David Hammond.
In April 2002, Paulin was quoted in the Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram Weekly calling Brooklyn-born Jewish settlers “Nazis” who “should be shot dead” and describing Israel as a “historical obscenity.” These remarks, along with his poem Killed in the Crossfire (published in the British newspaper The Observer in 2001), which referred to the Israeli army as the “Zionist SS,” led to accusations of extreme anti-Israel sentiment and, in some accounts, anti-Semitism. [6] [7] When asked how he responds to accusations of anti-Semitism that follow such descriptions, he told the newspaper "I just laugh when they do that to me. It does not worry me at all. These are the Hampstead liberal Zionists. I have utter contempt for them. They use this card of anti-Semitism." Regarding supporters of Israel, Paulin stated, "You are either a Zionist or an anti-Zionist. Everyone who supports Israel is a Zionist." [8] After his comments in Al-Ahram raised controversy, he said in a letter to The Independent and the Daily Telegraph , that his views were "distorted", writing, "I have been, and am, a lifelong opponent of anti-Semitism ... I do not support attacks on Israeli civilians under any circumstances. I am in favour of the current efforts to achieve a two-state solution to the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians." [9]
The immediate institutional fallout occurred at Harvard University, where Paulin had been invited to deliver the prestigious Morris Gray lecture. Student and faculty protests, particularly from Jewish organisations, caused the English department to cancel the reading in November 2002. Harvard officials expressed regret at the widespread consternation, emphasising that the initial invitation had been based solely on Paulin’s accomplishments as a poet. Some students and commentators, however, defended the cancellation as necessary to avoid endorsing statements seen as inhumane, while others framed it as a challenge to academic freedom and free speech. [10] [11] Despite the intensity of the criticism, many observers noted that Paulin’s record did not suggest personal anti-Semitism; he had publicly condemned anti-Semitism in figures like T. S. Eliot and Philip Larkin and had long argued for confronting cultural prejudices. Analysts and reviewers highlighted that the extremity of his language (such as the suggestion of violence toward settlers) overshadowed the nuanced humanist principles underpinning his political views. Commentators like Benjamin Paloff in the Boston Review later observed that Paulin’s rhetoric often conflated passionate political argument with poetic expression, creating a public perception problem in which his poetry was almost secondary to the controversy over his statements. [12] According to Denis MacShane in Globalising Hatred: The New Antisemitism (2008), it was Paulin's expression of his "anger and anguish at the behaviour of Israeli troops". [13]
In 2009, Paulin translated Euripides's Medea . [14] The band Tompaulin were named after Paulin.
Paulin has been identified as an Anti-Zionist, an Anti-racist [15] and as an Irish republican. [16] Paulin has identified with the radical Anglo-Irish republican tradition through John Milton, Anthony Ashley-Cooper, Francis Hutcheson, Thomas Paine and William Cobbett, extending to Oscar Wilde and James Joyce. [16] As a teenager, Paulin was involved in Trotskyist groups.
Paulin has criticised British military and political actions in Ireland, describing the paratroopers responsible for Bloody Sunday 1972 as "thugs sent in by public schoolboys to kill innocent Irish people. They were rotten, racist, bastards". [15] In 2002, Paulin described his political evolution, noting that he initially believed the Northern Ireland state could be reformed, but came to see it as unsalvageable after Bloody Sunday. As of 2002, he supported the Social Democratic and Labour Party's constitutional approach to a united Ireland while appreciating certain unionist values, though he observes that unionist leaders Edward Carson and James Craig thought the border would be a temporary measure, and the Unionist view of the border as permanent only came into being post-World War II. [1]
Paulin has praised the "patriotism of Hazlitt, Blake and Orwell". [2]
Paulin was a member of the British Labour Party, but resigned circa 2002 after declaring that the government of Tony Blair was "a Zionist government". [8]
Paulin met his wife, Munjiet Kaur Khosa, known as Giti, who grew up in the Sikh community in Belfast. They have two sons, and at least one grandchild. [17] [18]
We're fed this inert // this lying phrase // like comfort food // as another little Palestinian boy // in trainers jeans and a white teeshirt // is gunned down by the Zionist SS // whose initials we should // – but we don't – dumb goys – // clock in that weasel word crossfire
