Michael Charles Alston Mott was a British-born American author. He produced eleven poetry collections, four novels and a renowned biography of Thomas Merton.
Life and career
Mott was born in London in December 1930. His father was a solicitor and his mother was a sculptor from Denver, Colorado. Mott was educated in the United States and in England. After his service in the British Army, he attended Oriel College, Oxford, then art school and a year traveling in Europe and the Middle East. Mott then began his literary career taking a job in 1956 as the editor of trade journal, Air Freight. Between 1956-1966, Mott also worked as the assistant editor of the literary magazine: ADAM International Review, alongside editor Miron Grindea. In 1957, his first collection of poetry, The Cost of Living, was published. On 6 May 1961, Mott married Margaret Watt, a fashion designer, at St. John's Wood Church, London. In 1962, as the couple welcomed twin daughters, Mott's first novel The Notebooks of Susan Berry was published. Reviewer Kenneth Allsop writing for the Daily Mail called the book, "a brilliant first novel." Between 1961 and 1964, Mott worked as a book editor at Thames & Hudson and then as an editor at The Geographical Magazine. During this time, his first juvenile novel, Master Entrick was published in 1964 in the UK. The book was released in 1966 in the U.S. and a full twenty years later in 1986, a second edition was released as a Dell Yearling edition. In 1966, Mott was invited to teach at Kenyon College and to be the poetry editor of The Kenyon Review. While at Kenyon, Mott continued to publish poetry and fiction, publishing Helmet and Wasps and The Blind Cross. During the 1970s Mott and his family lived in Atlanta, Georgia. Mott taught at Emory University as Writer in Residence. Both Michael and Margaret, a costume designer with The Alliance Children's Theater and weaver, were active in Atlanta's budding arts scene. In 1972, he cofounded the Callanwolde Readings Program, which highlights poets and writers, with poet Turner Cassity. In 1974, Mott received the Governors Award in Fine Arts from then Governor Jimmy Carter. In 1978, Michael Mott was commissioned to write the authorized biography of Thomas Merton. The Seven Mountains of Thomas Merton was published in 1984. The biography remained on the non-fiction The New York Times best-seller list for nine weeks. The book has had nine printings with 60,000 copies sold to date. Winner of a number of awards, the biography was the runner up for the Pulitzer Prize in biography in 1985. Mott was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1979. In 1978-1979, and again in 1985-1986 Mott was Writer-in-Residence at the College of William and Mary. He held a Christopher Award and other awards, and had an honorary doctorate from St. Mary's College, Notre Dame. Mott's wife Margaret died of cancer in 1990. In 1992, Mott married Emma Lou Powers, he retired, Professor Emeritus, after eleven years' teaching at Bowling Green State University. In retirement he lived and wrote in Williamsburg, Virginia.
Published works
Fiction
The Notebooks of Susan Berry, Andre Deutsch, 1962; MacMillan Company, 1963; Mayflower-Dell Paperbacks, 1964.
Helmet and Wasps, Andre Deutsch, 1965; Houghton Mifflin, 1966; Granada Paperbacks, 1970.
Master Entrick, Andre Deutsch, 1965; Penguin Puffin, 1969; Delacorte, 1966; Dell Yearling, Second Edition, 1986.
The Blind Cross, Andre Deutsch, 1969; Delacorte, 1969.
Poetry
The Cost of Living, Adam Books, London, 1957.
The Tales of Idiots & New Exile, Adam Books, London, 1961.
A Book of Pictures, Outposts Publication, London, 1962.
Absence of Unicorns, Presence of Lions, Little, Brown & Co., Boston, 1976.
Counting the Grasses, Anhinga Press, Tallahassee, FL, 1980.
Piero Di Cosimo: The World of Infinite Possibilities, Tinhorn Press, Atlanta, 1990.
Taino, Russell McKnight, Logan Elm Press, Columbus, OH 1992.
Woman and the Sea, Selected Poems, Edited by Walton Beacham, and introduced by George Garrett, Anhinga Press, Tallahassee, FL., 1999.
The World of Richard Dadd, Margie/Intuit House Press, Chesterfield, MO, 2005., Winner of the 2004 Robert E. Lee & Ruth I. Wilson Poetry Book Award. Introduction by Dara Wier.
Pyder Hundred, the Natural History of Harlyn , Palores Publications, Redruth, Cornwall, 2013.
His poetry has also appeared in numerous journals including American Scholar, Georgia Review, Kenyon Review, Sewanee Review, Stand Magazine, Tar River Poetry Review, Times Literary Supplement, Verse, Visions International, Image, The Spectator, etc.
Robert E. Lee & Ruth I. Wilson Poetry Book Award, 2004
Resources
The Charles Deering McCormick Library of Special Collections, Northwestern University houses The Michael Mott Collection. This includes drafts and notes for Mott’s published and unpublished works, both poetry and prose; journals, diaries and notebooks from 1944–1988; and correspondence with his publishers and with fellow writers from 1965-1989.
