Draft:Mark Hyatt

Mark Hyatt
Born1940
Tooting, London, United Kingdom
Died1972 (aged 31–32)
Lancashire, United Kingdom
Cause of death
Suicide
Resting place
Streatham Cemetery
OccupationsWriter, poet
Notable workLove, Leda

Mark Hyatt (1940–1972) was a British poet and writer. Love, Leda, his only known novel, was published posthumously in 2023.

Biography

Hyatt was born in 1940, in Tooting, South London.[1] His father was a street merchant and his mother, who was Romani, died when Hyatt was five.[1] Hyatt had little formal education,[2] and was taught how to read and write as an adult by novelist Cressida Lindsay, who he met at a gay bar in Soho in 1960.[3] In 1962, Hyatt and Lindsay had a son, Dylan.[4][5] Hyatt had a relationship with publisher and author Anthony Blond (who also fathered a child with Lindsay).[4] From 1968 until shortly before his death in 1972, Hyatt lived with his partner Donald "Atom" Haworth in a cottage in Belthorn, Lancashire.[5] By early 1972, Haworth and Hyatt had split, and Hyatt moved to a bedsit in Manchester.[5]

Hyatt's poetry first found an audience in Children of Albion: Poetry of the Underground in Britain,[5] an anthology associated with the burgeoning British Poetry Revival movement.[6]

Hyatt was a heroin addict.[7] He had been imprisoned twice – once in 1966 for "stealing flowers" and once after being suspected of smuggling currency[5] (Hyatt was actually smuggling LSD at the time).[4]

Hyatt committed suicide in 1972, overdosing on aspirin and sleeping pills.[8] On 30 April, his body was found in a cave near Entwistle Reservoir in Lancashire.[5] Friends of Hyatts, Barry MacSweeney and J. H. Prynne (both fellow poets) had attempted to dissuade Hyatt from ending his own life, to no avail.[1] Hyatt entrusted Prynne with around 1600 pages of his writing for Prynne to photocopy.[5] A chapbook of his poems, How Odd was published posthumously in 1973, by MacSweeney and Andrew Cozier.[2]

Love, Leda, Hyatt's only known novel, was published on 21 January 2023 by Peninsula Press.[9][10] It is unclear exactly when Hyatt wrote the novel, but it is thought to have been penned before the Sexual Offences Act 1967, which legalised homosexual acts in the United Kingdom.[1] The novel follows Leda, a young working-class gay man living as a bohemian in Soho.[11] While not strictly autobiographical, much of the novel reflects Hyatt's own life and experiences.[5] The novel was published in the US in 2025 by Nightboat Books,[12] who also published a collection of Hyatt's poetry, So Much for Life, in 2023.[13]

Bibliography

Prose

  • "Randle's Vision" (1971)
  • Love, Leda (2023)

Poetry

  • How Odd (1973)
  • Eleven Poems (1974)
  • A Different Mercy (1976)
  • So Much for Life (2023)

References

  1. ^ a b c d Roberts, Luke (2023-01-27). "Mark Hyatt's newly discovered novel of queer life in 1960s London". TLS. Retrieved 2025-07-18.
  2. ^ a b Roberts, Luke (2017). Barry MacSweeney and the Politics of Post-War British Poetry. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-45958-5. ISBN 978-3-319-45957-8.
  3. ^ Grundy, David (2023-05-22). "Shadows Out of Color". The Poetry Foundation. Retrieved 2025-07-18.
  4. ^ a b c Blond, Anthony (2004). Jew Made in England. Timewell Press. pp. 203–. ISBN 978-1-85725-200-2. OCLC 233545472.
  5. ^ a b c d e f g h Roberts, Luke (2023). "A note on the author and the text". Love, Leda. Peninsula Press. pp. 165–173. ISBN 9781913512217.
  6. ^ Mills, Billy (2008-02-22). "Afraid of poetry? Read on". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2025-07-18.
  7. ^ Sheppard, Robert (2010). The poetry of saying: British poetry and its discontents, 1950-2000. Liverpool English texts and studies. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press. p. 43. ISBN 978-1-78138-809-9.
  8. ^ Olayiwola, Oluwaseun. "The feverish, persistent voice of the late Mark Hyatt". TLS. Retrieved 2025-07-18.
  9. ^ Hyatt, Mark (2023). Love, Leda. Peninsula Press. ISBN 9781913512217.
  10. ^ Pierce, Barry (2023-01-15). "Love, Leda review: a glimpse into pre-legalisation gay life in 1960s London". Big Issue. Retrieved 2025-07-18.
  11. ^ Lemmey, Huw (2023-02-23). "'A great lost work': Love, Leda's candid tale of 1960s gay life is a touching time capsule". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2025-07-18.
  12. ^ Wee, Thomas (2025-03-18). "Visions of Narcissus: On Genet, Freud, and Mark Hyatt's "Love, Leda"". Cleveland Review of Books. Retrieved 2025-07-18.
  13. ^ "Mark Hyatt". The Poetry Foundation. Retrieved 2025-07-18.

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