Patrick Roland Cullinan | |
---|---|
Born | Pretoria, South Africa | 25 May 1933
Died | 14 April 2011 Cape Town, South Africa | (aged 77)
Occupation | Poet, biographer |
Nationality | South African |
Relatives | Sir Thomas Cullinan (grandfather) |
Patrick Roland Cullinan (21 May 1932 – 14 April 2011) was a South African poet and biographer.
He was born in Pretoria into a significant diamond-mining family (his grandfather, Sir Thomas Cullinan, a diamond mine owner, gave his name to the Cullinan Diamond) and Patrick attended Charterhouse School and Magdalen College, University of Oxford in England (where he read Italian and Russian). After his studies, he returned to South Africa, where he worked as a sawmill owner and farmer in the Eastern Transvaal. With Lionel Abrahams, he founded the Bateleur Press in 1974, and the literary journal The Bloody Horse: Writings and the Arts in 1980. Through the journal (the title taken from a poem by Roy Campbell) Cullinan sought to re-establish the standing of poetry in South Africa. Influences included John Betjeman, W. B. Yeats, Eugenio Montale, Rimbaud, and Dante.