Thom Gunn

Transplanted British poet identified with the San Francisco scene and the California liberated style. Born and educated in England, he was grouped as a young man at Cambridge in the 1950's with a generation of writers, notably Philip Larkin, known as the Movement. Their verse was celebrated for its dry, skeptical rejection of what they saw as rhymed grandiosity. Thomson William Gunn was born in Gravesend, Kent, to journalist parents who divorced when he was 9. He moved about with his father, Herbert Smith Gunn, until they eventually settled in Hampshire. After spending two years in military service and six months in Paris, he enrolled at Trinity College, Cambridge.Mr. Gunn graduated fom Cambridge in 1953 and published "Fighting Terms," which identified him with the Movement, in 1954. The same year he began his graduate studies with Winters at Stanford and decided to become a resident of California. He soon started teaching at the University of California, Berkeley, as a lecturer. He was an associate professor of English from 1958 to 1966, after which he conducted classes as a visiting and, later, senior lecturer until four years ago. Besides Mike Kitay, Mr. Gunn is survived by his younger brother, Ander Gunn, of Penzance, England.