Frederick Turner is an American poet and academic. He is the author of two full-length epic science fiction poems, The New World and Genesis; several books of poetry; and a number of other works. He has been called "a major poet of our time".
Early life and education
Born in Northamptonshire, England, Turner is the son of British cultural anthropologistsVictor Witter Turner and Edith Turner. He had four siblings. Due to their parents' professional travels, Turner and his siblings were raised in Africa, the United States, and England. He was educated at the University of Oxford, where he obtained the degrees of B.A., M.A., and B.Litt. in English Language and Literature. After moving to the United States and working there, he was naturalized in 1977 as a U.S. citizen. His brothers include scientist Robert Turner and anthropologist Rory Turner, who teaches at Goucher College in Maryland.
Marriage and family
He has been married since 1966 to Mei Lin Turner and has two sons.
As a poet Turner uses the longer genres, the narrative, science fiction, and strict metrical forms. He is a winner of the Milan Fust Prize and the Levinson Poetry Prize, awarded by Poetry Magazine. He has been described as "a universal scholar - a rare find in a world of over-specialization - whose work transects and borrows from several rather disparate fields."
Reviews and commentary
"In Hadean Eclogues, Frederick Turner..., an interdisciplinary scholar and devotee of the classics, searches for a modern Arcadia, the sacred and taboo gateway between heaven and Earth that inspired the poets of old. He finds it in a startling place - the emerging suburbs in the cities of his adopted home, Texas." --Minneapolis Star-Tribune
Genesis, an Epic Poem, by Frederick Turner... doesn’t seem like an epic poem about the terraforming of Mars, using characters modeled partly on Greek mythology, would be a recipe for success. But Turner is an exceptionally skillful poet, who when he wrote this book had already completed a fascinating Mars novel, A Double Shadow, and another fine book-length narrative poem, The New World. Here, the Olympian grandeur of the characters and plot match well with the Martian landscape, which under its rapid terraforming is still recognizably a place established in the popular imagination by the Viking landers. The result is a triumph that deserves to be better known." --IEEE Spectrum
