James Kirkup is remarkable for his prodigious output in a number of genres: poetry, travel writing, drama, autobiography, and children's literature, as well as for his translations and editing. Since the early 1950s hardly a year has gone by without the appearance of a book acknowledging his involvement in some capacity. With more than twenty-five volumes of poetry to his credit, he is, as James Dickey aptly comments, "one of those poets to whom writing is a continuous process, natural, simply a part of living."

Born to James Harold and Mary Johnson Kirkup, James Falconer Kirkup describes himself as "the only son of very poor working-class parents living at South Shields, County Durham, on the River Tyne, an area of coal mines and ship-building industries." An "inborn sense of deep solitude and apartness" contributed to his being "decidedly the Odd Boy Out" at South Shields Secondary School, where...