James Brockway

James Brockway (21 October 1916 – 15 December 2000) was an English poet and translator, who was born in Birmingham and migrated to The Hague, the Netherlands, where he died.

[1] The youngest son of a Birmingham industrialist,[1] Brockway joined the civil service in 1935 and the following year went to study at the London School of Economics.

[1] In 1946 he emigrated to the Netherlands, where he had made friends,[1] and there he began to translate English novels into Dutch, including works by Alan Sillitoe, Muriel Spark and Iris Murdoch[1] His first poetry collection, No Summer Song, appeared in 1949.

[1] Some of the poets whose work he translated into English include Rutger Kopland, Anton Korteweg, M. Vasalis, Hans Lodeizen, Gerrit Achterberg, Remco Campert, Tom van Deel, J. C. Bloem and Patty Scholten.

Additionally a Brockway Workshop has also been set up, to run every two years, offering more practical support to international poetry translators.