Thom Gunn: Author

Profiles in Gay Courage
Thom Gunn

Thom Gunn — Short Biography

Thom Gunn (1929–2004) was an Anglo-American poet whose career bridged formalist tradition and radical queer experimentation, making him one of the most distinctive voices in postwar poetry. Born in Gravesend, England, Gunn studied at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he first gained recognition for his tightly metered, muscular verse that explored themes of violence, desire, and existential tension. In 1954 he moved to the United States, completing his education at Stanford under poet Yvor Winters before settling permanently in San Francisco.

Gunn’s early collections, including Fighting Terms (1954) and The Sense of Movement (1957), established him as a leading figure among “The Movement” poets in Britain. Yet his relocation to San Francisco marked a shift: immersed in the city’s counterculture and gay liberation movements, Gunn experimented with free verse, psychedelics, and an unflinching embrace of queer life. His 1971 collection Moly, inspired by LSD experiences, announced his willingness to merge classical form with radical subject matter.

As an openly gay poet, Gunn chronicled the pleasures and perils of urban sexual culture, from leather bars to the intimacy of love between men. His later works, most notably The Man with Night Sweats (1992), captured the devastation of the AIDS crisis with heartbreaking clarity, blending elegy with resilience.

Respected by both academic critics and queer readers, Gunn achieved the rare feat of fusing high literary craft with lived subcultural experience. By the time of his death in San Francisco in 2004, he had become a celebrated poet of desire, loss, and survival — a bridge between tradition and liberation.