Gordon Kenneth Alexander Wharton was born in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire on 19 April 1929.
He started publishing poems from the age of about 21 and he became co-editor of the now-defunct literary magazine Chanticleer with the Irish poet, Patrick Galvin, at around the same time.
Shortly afterwards he started reviewing regularly for the Times Literary Supplement, mainly dealing with modern and 17th-century poetry.
Wharton listed among the prime influences on his work Dylan Thomas, Andrew Marvell and ("inevitably") W.H.
Wharton published two small collections of verse in the mid to late 1950s: This and That (Fantasy Press 1955) and Errors of Observation (The School of Art, University of Reading 1957) and issue number 8 of The Poet magazine in 1954 was devoted entirely to his poems.