Edward Field

EDWARD FIELD was born in 1924 in Brooklyn, N.Y., and attended New York University before enlisting in the US Air Force in 1943. During the war, as a navigator in heavy bombers, he was stationed at Grafton-Underwood airfield in the Midlands, and flew 25 missions over Germany. After his plane crashed in the North Sea, he was plucked out of the water by a British Air-Sea Rescue ship. It was during the war that he began writing poetry, influenced by his discovery of the poets George Barker, Stephen Spender, Dylan Thomas, and Dunstan Thompson, who were all in London and hanging out at the Gargoyle Club. His first book of poems, Stand Up, Friend, With Me, was published in 1963, upon winning the Lamont Award.

His travel diary of Afghanistan -- Kabuli Days, Travels in Old Afghanistan -- has just come out from World Parade Books. And a CD of him reading his poems with music by Ack Van Rooyen and Peter Tiehuis is also available from World Parade Books.

Among his many honors are the Shelley Memorial Award, a Lambda Award, an Academy Award in 1965 for the documentary film “To Be Alive” for which he wrote the voice-over narration, and the Bill Whitehead Lifetime Achievement Award.

He has given readings at hundreds of colleges and other institutions around the United States, including the Library of Congress. He can be seen reading poems on www.YouTube.com/fieldinski.

Forthcoming is The Villagers, a four-generation family saga of a Greenwich Village family, set against the background of Village history, written with his partner, Neil Derrick. They have lived for many years in Westbeth, an artist's housing project in Greenwich Village

More information on his website www.edwardfield.com.