| About the Book
The Prisms of My Mind is the result of a lifetime of
poetry, made public in its entirety for the first time. Richard
Gordon Hepworth, a surgeon of English background who now makes his
home in the United States, was born to be a poet. Though trained as
a surgeon, writing poetry was his passion, with his first work being
written when he was 11-years-old. Gordon’s collection offers readers
a unique blend of observation, thoughtfulness and a keen ability to
look at life below the surface.
The section called The Playboy contains poems that belong in a
Playboy Magazine-type of publication and represents unknown times.
The best known of the bunch is the previously published Lonely
Bachelor Thoughts. Others have snippets suggestive of an Ogden Nash
influence, but they aren’t poems Gordon seems inclined to talk
about, for obvious reasons. Many of the English poems were written
in Canada and his experiences practicing medicine there. During his
years on the prairie, in Toronto and in Vancouver, tumultuous
relationships were possibly responsible for many love poems,
particularly those with hidden cynicism.
Additionally, a number of poems relating to Gordon’s time
and travels in the Arctic region evoke the feelings he experienced
in those often-lonely lands and include Give Me the Arctic, Cameron
Bay, and A Prospector’s last thoughts on leaving Yellowknife. His
most recent poems, A Day of Infamy, Bearded, and the Elegy were
written after his retirement as a surgeon.
About
the Author
Richard Gordon Hepworth was born in 1926 in New Farnley, Leeds,
Yorkshire, England. His father, William Hepworth, was a scientist,
his mother a professional soprano. Gordon’s first poem was written
when he was only eleven, but was received with such scorn by his
father that the younger Hepworth was unable to write verse of any
kind for several years. Gordon entered Leeds University in 1944;
there, he took pre-medical courses and managed to get in some
English classes as well. Due to the wartime short-track timing, he
entered the Medical School at Leeds almost immediately and was in
training there until graduation in 1951. An illness in one of his
lungs forced Gordon to take a year off during his training, and it
was during that time that he became an Associate Producer at a
theater in London, where he stayed for the balance of the year. He
had hoped to continue in another similar position, but was still
very much under the influence of his father, who told him not to
return home unless he was returning to medical school. Gordon
obeyed, and he graduated in 1951. Gordon left Leeds in 1953 for
Canada. He was in Vancouver for fifteen years before moving to the
United States and taking up residence in Memphis, Tennessee. During
those years, he published Medical Mafia, a novel about criminals in
medicine. (He is also the author of The Making of a Chief.) Gordon
moved to California after a few years in Tennessee and spent the
next ten to fifteen years there until he retired to Point Roberts,
Washington in the early 90s.
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