Handed over to the military, he was court-martialled for refusing to obey orders, and served a sentence of more than a year in Wormwood Scrubs and Winchester prisons.

[7] Bunting's friend Louis Zukofsky described him as a "conservative/anti-fascist/imperialist",[8] though Bunting himself listed the major influences on his artistic and personal outlook somewhat differently as "Jails and the sea, Quaker mysticism and socialist politics, a lasting unlucky passion, the slums of Lambeth and Hoxton ..."[9] These events were to have an important role in his first major poem, "Villon" (1925).

"Villon" was one of a rather rare set of complex structured poems that Bunting labelled "sonatas", thus underlining the sonic qualities of his verse and recalling his love of music.

[10] The glamour of the cosmopolitan modernist examples of Nina Hamnett and Mina Loy seems to have influenced Bunting in his later move from London to Paris.

[2] The Basil Bunting Poetry Award and Young Person's Prize, administered by Newcastle University, are open internationally to any poet writing in English.

[16][17] Divided into five parts and noted for its intricate use of sound and resonances with medieval literature,[18] Briggflatts is an autobiographical long poem, looking back on teenage love and on Bunting's involvement in the high modernist period.

In addition, Briggflatts can be read as a meditation on the limits of life and a celebration of Northumbrian culture and dialect, as symbolised by events and figures like the doomed Viking King Eric Bloodaxe.