THOM GUNN, British poet, born (d: 2004); Born Thomson William Gunn in Gravesend, Kent. In his youth, he attended University College School in Hampstead, London. Later, he read English literature at Trinity College, Cambridge, graduated in 1953, and published his first collection of verse, Fighting Terms, the following year.

As a young British poet, his work was associated with The Movement. Also in 1954, he emigrated to the United States to teach writing at Stanford University and to remain close to his partner, Mike Kitay, whom he had met while at college. During the 1960s and 1970s, his verse explored society’s increasingly liberal views of drugs, homosexuality, and poetic form. He died in his sleep in San Francisco, where he had lived since 1960.