Oliver Bernard was once my neighbour in a South Norfolk village,
Kenninghall. I was renting a small house and in retreat from a painful separation; he was a well-known local CND activist and chaired a group with Derek Longmire and Colin Phillips. One day he invited me to a local classical music appreciation group which was run, I think, by Elizabeth Chattaway. I dutifully attended, though, at the time, I didn't much care for 'classical' music, I thought, though I could say much about the English blues revival if ever prompted.
I met Oliver many years later at a reading of his translation of Rimbaud's A Season in Hell'. These dramatic performances are now legendary. Oliver had donned some kind of white painters' tunic and delivered his Rimbaud with great assurance in a reading voice which compelled you to pay attention.
A decade later I was a visiting undergraduate at Trinity College, Dublin. I was one of many who would cram in to the lecture hall to hear Brendan Kennelly on Yeats on a Friday afternoon. He would quote whole poems from memory, talk without notes and, like Oliver, had the power to bring poetry to life. I bumped into him one day in a corridor and he asked who I was and invited me into his office. The room was a maze of books piled almost to shoulder height with walkways through. He asked me where I was from, to which I duly replied: 'Norfolk'. 'Ah, do you know Oliver Bernard?', he asked as if I had just named a village in Sligo. He said how much he admired Oliver, who had read at Trinity College, and Brendan gave me a copy of his own Cromwell.
Oliver and his well known brothers, Bruce and Jeffrey, were part of the bohemian Soho scene of the 50s which included such luminaries as George Barker and Francis Bacon. The photo top left was taken by John Deakin in 1956. The photo top right is a cut down from a larger photo at the National Gallery taken by Sam Barker, George's son.
http://collection.britishcouncil.org/collection/artist/5/18492
Here's a link to Oliver reading one of my favourite poems,
'For John Donovan':
Here's a link to another fan of this poem:
Or go to Oliver's website:
I have some experience of laying paving stones and John Donovan,
who has also worked as a labourer, is a good friend.
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