*West Coast Correspondences: Randolph Stow Encounters Thom Gunn’s *The Sense of Movement

Abstract

‘Taking a letter from English poet Thom Gunn, resident in California, to Stow in Geraldton, WA, as a starting point, the author explores ‘correspondences’ between the two poets. He examines the way in which their ‘mirroring movements between England and the New World enact comparable tensions and preoccupations in their work, between cosmopolitanism and localism, Romanticism and demotic contemporary cultures, which may account for the affinity between them that Gunn’s letter asserts so categorically and intriguingly’ (p. 33). Brown discusses Stow’s education and involvement in literary life at the University of Western Australia and his reading of Gunn’s early poetry in *The Sense of Movement* ‘focusing upon some telling resonances and contrasts’ it has with Stow’s own work’ (p.33).