Maxwell, Glyn
Entry updated 29 September 2025. Tagged: Author, Poet.
(1962- ) UK playwright, librettist, academic, poet and author, known mostly since he became active in the early 1980s for his Poetry; his first title of interest is Time's Fool: A Tale in Verse (2000), a book-length narrative poem which replays the legend of the Flying Dutchman [see The Encyclopedia of Fantasy under links below] through the experiences of its teenage protagonist, who is trapped on a train, seemingly for ever (the narrative reaches from 1970 to a desolate Near Future 2019); he is only allowed to step outside once every seven years, on Christmas Eve, when he is forced to experience life for a day with his ageing family. He himself seems Immortal. Anticipation of his regular incarnation creates a cult (see Messiahs; Religion). Drinks with Dead Poets: The Autumn Term (2016), as its title deposes, comprises a series of Dialogues with the Dead.
Sf topoi surface imagistically throughout individual poems, early work being assembled in One Thousand Nights and Counting: Selected Poems (coll 2011). The savage synecdoches descriptive of AIs in How the Hell Are You (2020 chap) sharpen the proleptic tonality of some early work. [JC]
Glyn Maxwell
born Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire: 1962
works (highly selected)
- Time's Fool: A Tale in Verse (New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2000) [poem: pb/]
- Drinks with Dead Poets: The Autumn Term (London: Oberon Books, 2016) [pb/]
collections and stories
- One Thousand Nights and Counting: Selected Poems (London: Picador, 2011) [poetry: coll: hb/Jerry Bauer]
- How the Hell Are You (London: Picador, 2020) [poetry: coll: chap: pb/Stanley Greene]
links
previous versions of this entry