James Crain Michie [ "Mind Your Language: Dot Wordsworth continues her look at BBC booklets on pronunciation published in the 1930s"] (24 June 1927 – 30 October 2007) was an English poet, translator and editor, of Scottish and American descent
.
Early life
Michie was born in
Weybridge, Surrey, one of the three sons of James Kilgour Michie and his American wife Marjorie Crain Pfeiffer.
His father was a banker and East India merchant, originally from Falkland, Fife, in Scotland.
["Fife Man's important post: Managing Director of East India Merchants", Dundee Courier, 17 March 1927]
Michie was educated at Marlborough College and Trinity College, Oxford, where he held an exhibition in Classics but took a BA in English literature. Instead of undertaking National Service, he was accepted as a conscientious objector and spent two years with the International Voluntary Service for Peace,[Lawrence Sail, "James Michie: Publisher, translator and poet whose themes were love, dreams and death", The Guardian, 5 November 2007, accessed 9 June 2023]
Michie then joined John Lehmann's The London Magazine and the Workers' Educational Association, beginning a career in publishing.[ "James Michie" (obituary), The Independent, 21 November 2007, accessed 8 June 2023]
His younger brother Donald Michie became a researcher in artificial intelligence. Their oldest brother, Ian, became a banker.
Translator and poet
The texts that Michie translated included
The Odes of Horace,
The Art of Love by
Ovid,
The Poems of Catullus,
The Epigrams of Martial and selections from
La Fontaine's and
Aesop's
fables. He was the editorial director of The Bodley Head, a British publishing company, and lecturer at London University. His
Collected Poems won the 1995 Hawthornden Prize.
[Euripides Helen 019802035X 1981 "His collaborator, James Michie, is presently a Director of the Bodley Head in London. He holds an MA. in Classics and English Literature from Oxford University. His publications include a book of poems, Possible Laughter (1959), and translations of various Latin poets, The Odes of Horace, The Poems of Catullus, and The Epigrams of Martial."]
Beginning in the 1970s, Michie devised and judged literary competitions for The Spectator under the pen-name of Jaspistos.
He caused controversy in 2004 when his poem, "Friendly Fire," was published in The Spectator under then-editor Boris Johnson.[ Outrage at Spectator's poetic attack on Scots, The Herald, August 13, 2004]
Personal life
In 1950 Michie married firstly Daphne Segré, and they were divorced in 1960. In 1964, he married secondly Sarah Courtauld. They had two sons and a daughter, and were divorced. Michie also had a son with Lady Clare Asquith, a daughter of Julian Asquith, 2nd Earl of Oxford and Asquith, and a daughter with Tatiana Orlov.
Selected publications
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Oxford Poetry 1949 (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1949, co-editor, with Kingsley Amis)
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Possible Laughter (London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1959, verse)
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Odes of Horace (London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1964, translations)
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The Odes of Horace, new edition illustrated by Elisabeth Frink (London: Folio Society, 1988)
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The Poems of Catullus (London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1969, translations)
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La Fontaine Selected Fables (London: Viking Press, 1979)
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New and Selected Poems (London: Chatto & Windus, 1983)
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Oxford Book of Short Poems (Oxford University Press, 1985, co-editor, with P. J. Kavanagh)
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Aesop's Fables retold in verse, illustrated by John Vernon Lord (London: Jonathon Cape, 1989)
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Collected Poems (London: Sinclair-Stevenson Ltd, 1994)
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Last Poems, with Foreword by Richard Ingrams (Oldie Publications, 2008)
Awards
