Joe Winter

Winter composed a number of poems during his Calcutta life some of which have been published under the title Guest and Host. The book cover suggests they record 'the experience of being welcomed into the household of another country'. They appear to deal with the commonplace and to touch on the numinous. The volume comprises four long poems. The first is a sonnet-sequence, Guest and Host; the next, Earthquake at Kutch, is a response in five parts to the 2001 disaster in Gujarat. The Undefeated is a first-person Memoir of an old Indian Infantry Officer of the British Raj (so subtitled at the subject's request). The concluding poem, Meditation on the Goddess, is an exploration of the annual festival in celebration of the goddess Durga in the state of West Bengal. The last-mentioned poem begins:

Winter began to write poetry in 1961. His first book publication was A Miracle and the Tree with Anvil Press in 1972. While in India he wrote literary articles and general essays for the press, in particular The Statesman of Kolkata. Writers Workshop of Kolkata has brought out all his original poetry (currently 21 volumes). Winter is gradually uploading all his original poetry onto his website.

Winter was born in 1943 and educated at Magdalen College School, Oxford and Exeter College, Oxford. He taught English in London comprehensive schools from 1967 to 1994, when he went to live in Calcutta, India (now Kolkata), returning to England in 2006. While in India he taught part-time in a variety of schools, wrote articles of literary and general interest (in particular for The Statesman of Kolkata), and translated a number of volumes of the poetry and prose of Rabindranath Tagore and the poetry of Jibanananda Das from the Bengali original (see website Publications), having learnt Bengali during the period. Back in England he continues to teach, and now does so part-time. He has never stopped writing poetry.