James Martin Fenton FRSL FRSA (born 25 April 1949) is an English poet, journalist and literary critic.
At Oxford, his tutor John Fuller, who was writing A Reader's Guide to W. H. Auden at the time, further encouraged that enthusiasm.
[3] Later published by Fuller's Sycamore Press, it largely concerns the cultural collision in the 19th century between the United States and Japan.
It displays in embryo many of the characteristics that define Fenton's later work: technical mastery combined with a fascination with issues that arise from the Western interaction with other cultures.
Hitchens praised Fenton's extraordinary talent, stating that he too believed him to be the greatest poet of his generation.
[3] With the proceeds he traveled to East Asia, where he wrote of the U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam and the end of the Lon Nol regime in Cambodia, which presaged the rise of Pol Pot.
He was political correspondent of the New Statesman, where he worked alongside Christopher Hitchens, Julian Barnes and Martin Amis.
In response to criticisms of his comparatively slim Selected Poems (2006), he warned against the notion of poets churning out poetry in a regular, automated fashion.
[16] Fenton has been influenced in his writing by musical theatre, as evidenced in "Here Come the Drum Majorettes" from Out of Danger: "Gleb meet Glubb.
'"[17] He was the original English librettist for the musical of Les Misérables but Cameron Mackintosh later replaced him with Herbert Kretzmer.