British Poet
Born 1922 Died 1943
He was born Sidney Arthur Kilworth Keyes on the 27th May 1922
at The Homestead, West Hill, Dartford in Kent, the only
child of Reginald Keyes, a flour miller by trade and a former
army captain, and his second wife, Edith Mary. His mother died
from peritonitis when he was only six weeks old, and so he was
sent to live with his paternal grandfather, Sidney Kilworth
Keyes, a local farmer. Since he was rather a frail child, he
was not allowed to mix with other children, and so led an
isolated and lonely childhood which inevitably led him to seek
solace and diversion in reading. He was eventually sent to a
preparatory school in Dartford at the age of nine, and two years
later attended Dartford Grammar School until the age of
fourteen when he went to Tonbridge School.
He wrote his first serious poem Elegy after the
death of his grandfather in 1938 and by the time he left school
in July 1940 he had written another seventy poems which were all
later discovered in a manuscript book. In October 1940 he went
to Queen's College, Oxford to read history and met John
Heath-Stubbs who helped him to develop and perfect his poetic
technique. At Oxford he also became editor of the student
newspaper Cherwell, and collaborated with Michael
Meyer to edit the anthology Eight Oxford Poets which
appeared in 1941.
Throughout his Oxford years he wrote a poem a week, including
Remember your Lovers, which he wrote in an
examination hall, after he had finished one of his papers early.
By the end of 1941 he had enough poems to form the basis of his
first volume, The Iron Laurel, although he held back
publication until 1942 in order to give himself enough time to
finish The Foreign Gate, a rather long poem which
featured the character of Death.
His education was interupted when he decided to enlist in the
army in April 1942. He completed his officer training at
Dunbar and was later commissioned as a second lieutenant in
Queen's Own Royal West Kent Regiment. He continued to write
poetry and his Dido's Lament for Aeneas, Rome
Remember and North Sea, a lament for his
unrequited love for Milein Cosman, all date from this period
in his life.
His regiment arrived at Algiers in April 1943 to take part in
the final stages of the Tunisian campaign. There Keyes saw a
fortnight's fighting before he was killed in action near Sidi
Abdullah on the 29th April 1943. According to James Lucas, he
was "a gallant Christian gentleman who sacrificed himself for
the men under his command". He was buried in the Massicault War
Cemetery in Borj-el-Amri.
A second volume of poetry The Cruel Solstice was
published shortly after his death, which togther with The
Iron Laurel was awarded the Hawthornden prize. His
collected poems were edited by Michael Meyer and appeared in
1945. A new edition was republished in 2002 with the addition of
a few previously unpublished poems and some memoirs contributed
by friends. Together with Keith Douglas and Alun Lewis,
Sidney Keyes is regarded as one of the outstanding British poets
of World War II.
REFERENCES
Michael De-la-Noy, ‘Keyes, Sidney Arthur Kilworth (1922–1943)’,
rev., Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University
Press
Iain MacFarlaine, Sidney Keyes at
http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=8886511
Sidney Keyes at
http://www.carcanet.co.uk/cgi-bin/scribe?showdoc=7;doctype=biogr
aphy