Cambridge University has educated a fair number of queer poets, from those well known (Lord Byron or Rupert Brooke) to those who should be more celebrated (Amy Levy).
Thom Gunn (1929-2004) was born to a suburban household in Gravesend, Kent; an otherwise conventional childhood abruptly ended with his parent’s divorce, followed by his mother’s suicide. After two years of national service he came up to Trinity College in 1950, where he discovered homosexuality and met his life partner Mike Kitay. Kitay was an American, and in 1954 Gunn followed him to San Francisco where he would spend the rest of his life writing poetry and teaching at the Universities of Stanford and Berkeley.
Gunn achieved early success as a poet, with his first collection published just after graduation. He was identified as part of “The Movement” of young English post-war poets, including Ted Hughes, Kingsley Amis and Philip Larkin. Gunn’s early poetry was highly formal and classical, often written in iambic pentameter; in California his style loosened and became more experimental.
In San Francisco Gunn enjoyed all the pleasures of gay life before AIDS, living in a self-described “queer household”. His poetry deals with urban life, hedonism, aging, drug use, and sex. Possibly his most famous collection of poetry, The Man with the Night Sweats, commemorated his friends lost to AIDS.
Siegfried Sassoon (1886-1967) was born to an aristocratic family and came up to Clare College in 1905. He managed to leave without getting a degree and spent the next few years living as a country gentleman: hunting, playing cricket and writing. When the First World War broke out in 1914 Sassoon enrolled immediately; however his initial patriotism soon gave way to horror and cynicism, and he published A Soldier’s Declaration denouncing the conflict in 1917.
Sassoon is today remembered chiefly for his angry, satirical and compassionate anti-war poems. However he had a long career post-war, becoming a writer and editor, and travelling the US and Europe. He was a strong supporter of other writers, including Wilfred Owen and EM Forster. His later literary output included a popular three-volume autobiography The Memoirs of George Sherston, while his poetry became increasingly spiritual. He converted to Catholicism before his death.
Sassoon realised his homosexuality while at Cambridge and had an intense affair with a fellow student. His diaries refer to numerous homosexual affairs, including a long-term relationship with the writer and socialite Stephen Tennant. They lived together in London and went on trips to Europe with a pet parrot and nanny.
His sexuality seemed to be a source of frustration and conflict; a brief marriage ended in failure (though Sassoon was a devoted father). Biographers are divided on how far his sexuality drove both his writing and his incredible feats of brave, self-destructive lunacy on the behaviour. In an unpublished poem from his diary titled “Peace”, he writes:
“In my heart there’s cruel war that must be waged
In darkness vile with moans and bleeding bodies maimed;
A knowing hunger drives me, wild to be assuaged,
And bitter lust chuckles within me unashamed.”
Further Reading
A Queer History of Cambridgeshire 
1 Comment