Portadown-born poet Sam Gardiner, who has died in his 80th year, came late to poetic prominence, being 64 when his first collection was published.
The poet, who was known to his family as Trevor, spent most of his life in England, and held the North at a sceptical distance. His poetic returns were accompanied by a mixture of wit, understanding, and anger. He was conscious of being part of Protestant Ulster. In Four or So he evokes his childhood: ". . . long enough to leave the grown ups/to their tea and biscuits in the parlour/ (with The Lord is my Shepherd,/ He Watches Over Me, and Thou Lord/ Seest Everything I Do, on the wall).
However, he kept his distance from many aspects of that community. In Protestant Ulster, he writes of confronting two salesmen at his door, evangelists for PVC windows: "If I were you,/ I'd save my CO2/ For atheists and papists. I doubt/ They even know about/ King Billy." "Who?"/ "William III to you,/ Brought sliding sashes to /Britain, fetched in pure air and sanity./Without him we'd still be/ In the dark."
His view of the world was both sceptical and humane. That was expressed in his life, as well as in poetry. He chose to live in Grimsby, a former fishing port on England’s east coast that has seen better days. In Grimsby, he lived for some time on the Nunsthorpe estate. Nunsthorpe is a large local authority estate, with high levels of deprivation.
Gardiner’s view of Nunsthorpe was positive: “Before that we had lived in Belfast and Birmingham and compared to those places, Nunsthorpe was like heaven.”
In Nunsthorpe, he was one of the founders of a poetry group. There, he was encouraging to those who had literary ambitions, and to those merely dipping their toes into poetry.
His poems showed empathy with people trying to get by in such estates . In Sea Coal he wrote of an elderly couple collecting sea coal in winter: "in a plastic bag slaked with sand/ they have amassed a shovelful./ I hope they get their drudgery's worth:/ A firelit hearth, perhaps: warm hands/ at bedtime to touch each other with."
Samuel Trevor Gardiner was born in Portadown in the autumn of 1936, the elder of two children and only son to Thomas Gardiner, a lorry driver, and his wife Ivy (née Ruddell). Both parents were musical: he inherited that ability, and became a fine violinist. He attended Edenderry Primary School and Portadown College. There, his French teacher encouraged him to write poetry. He responded to that encouragement, and never stopped writing. In his youth he made a couple of long pilgrimages by bicycle from Portadown to Yeats’s grave at Drumcliffe.
After school he served an apprenticeship as an architect. On qualifying, he worked on both sides of the Border.
In 1969, he moved to England: and, in 1985, to Grimsby, continuing to work as an architect. In the early 1990s he retired from work. That left him free to devote his time and energy to poetry.
Not only did he come late to prominence, he achieved such without giving public readings. In 1993 Protestant Windows won Britain's National Poetry competition. This was a shock, as he was relatively unknown. Thereafter, he developed his reputation by publishing regularly.
That reputation will be added to, as he has left a significant body of unpublished work.
He is survived by his wife, Eileen: sister Eunice: daughter Eunice: son Stephen: and step-daughter Wendy. He was predeceased by his first wife Isobel.