Draft:Mark Hyatt
British writer and poet
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Mark Hyatt (1940–1972) was a British poet and writer. Love, Leda, his only known novel, was published posthumously in 2023.
Mark Hyatt | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1940 Tooting, London, United Kingdom |
| Died | 1972 (aged 31–32) Lancashire, United Kingdom |
Cause of death | Suicide |
Resting place | Streatham Cemetery |
| Occupations | Writer, poet |
| Notable work | Love, Leda |
Biography
Hyatt was born in 1940, in Tooting, South London.[1] His father was a street merchant and his mother, who was Romani, died when Hyatt was five.[1] Hyatt had little formal education,[2] and was taught how to read and write as an adult by novelist Cressida Lindsay, who he met at a gay bar in Soho in 1960.[3] In 1962, Hyatt and Lindsay had a son, Dylan.[4][5] Hyatt had a relationship with publisher and author Anthony Blond (who also fathered a child with Lindsay).[4] From 1968 until shortly before his death in 1972, Hyatt lived with his partner Donald "Atom" Haworth in a cottage in Belthorn, Lancashire.[5] By early 1972, Haworth and Hyatt had split, and Hyatt moved to a bedsit in Manchester.[5]
Hyatt's poetry first found an audience in Children of Albion: Poetry of the Underground in Britain,[5] an anthology associated with the burgeoning British Poetry Revival movement.[6]
Hyatt was a heroin addict.[7] He had been imprisoned twice – once in 1966 for "stealing flowers" and once after being suspected of smuggling currency[5] (Hyatt was actually smuggling LSD at the time).[4]
Hyatt committed suicide in 1972, overdosing on aspirin and sleeping pills.[8] On 30 April, his body was found in a cave near Entwistle Reservoir in Lancashire.[5] Friends of Hyatts, Barry MacSweeney and J. H. Prynne (both fellow poets) had attempted to dissuade Hyatt from ending his own life, to no avail.[1] Hyatt entrusted Prynne with around 1600 pages of his writing for Prynne to photocopy.[5] A chapbook of his poems, How Odd was published posthumously in 1973, by MacSweeney and Andrew Cozier.[2]
Love, Leda, Hyatt's only known novel, was published on 21 January 2023 by Peninsula Press.[9][10] It is unclear exactly when Hyatt wrote the novel, but it is thought to have been penned before the Sexual Offences Act 1967, which legalised homosexual acts in the United Kingdom.[1] The novel follows Leda, a young working-class gay man living as a bohemian in Soho.[11] While not strictly autobiographical, much of the novel reflects Hyatt's own life and experiences.[5] The novel was published in the US in 2025 by Nightboat Books,[12] who also published a collection of Hyatt's poetry, So Much for Life, in 2023.[13]
Bibliography
Prose
- "Randle's Vision" (1971)
- Love, Leda (2023)
Poetry
- How Odd (1973)
- Eleven Poems (1974)
- A Different Mercy (1976)
- So Much for Life (2023)