Friends have paid tribute to a Carshalton poet who sadly passed away earlier this month.
Lawrence Upton, 70, was pronounced dead on February 19 after emergency services were called to Carshalton High Street.
A friend of Lawrence, professor Robert Hampson, said he was a leading figure in what has been dubbed the British Poetry Revival.
"In the 1970s he was actively involved in Poets Conference, the Association of Little Presses, Writers Forum and the Poetry Society," Prof Hampson said.
"During the 1970s, he performed with P.C. Fencott and Cris Cheek in the sound poetry performance group jgjgjg across Europe and as a solo performer in the US and Canada."
Throughout the next few of decades, he continued to work as a poet, composer and performer.
He founded the magazine RWC in 1990 and ran the reading series Subvoicive from 1994-2005.
But it was his work with Bob Cobbing that he was probably best known for.
"He and Cobbing wrote and performed the collaborative visual poem, Domestic Ambient Noise, which ran to some 2,000 pages," Prof Hampson added.
"They also co-edited the ground-breaking Word Score Utterance Choreography (Writers Forum, 1998), a primer for the performance of visual poetry."
After Cobbing’s death in 2002, Upton moved to Cornwall, but he always maintained his connection to Carshalton, keeping his much loved home down south.
He continued to visit London as a Research Fellow in the Music Department at Goldsmiths’ College, University of London, between 2008 and 2015.
"There was also a more tender, lyrical side to his poetry, which is evident in his many published works," Prof Hampson added.
"But particularly the later works where he responds to the landscapes of Cornwall and the Scilly Isles."
Another of Lawrence's friends, Steve Ostler, said he was "of some note" in his community of poets.
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"He had connections with Eric Mottram, Bob Cobbing and Philip Glass and others in the past and was busily, though slowly, executing the artistic estate of Alaric Sumner," he said.
"Keeping the old artistic traditions of the area going you might say."
He also highlighted the time Lawrence spent at Carshalton College in the late 1980s through to the mid 90s where he became Senior Lecturer in IT.
Summing up Lawrence's life, Mr Ostler said: "He positively influenced many life chances."
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