Ezra Pound (1885-1972), Poet

Sitter in 5 portraits
Born in Idaho, USA, Pound came to London in 1908, and became involved with the leading avant-garde writers and artists of the time, including T.S. Eliot, James Joyce and Henri Gaudier-Brzeska. Pound was fascinated by the latest developments in the visual arts, notably abstraction and Cubism. He coined the term Vorticism to describe the British form of Futurism. He wrote for Wyndham Lewis's Blast magazine, which helped disseminate Futurist ideas. The Cantos, his major poetical work, began to appear in 1917. Pound left London in 1920. In the 1930s, Pound became committed to Italian fascist politics, leading to his decade-long incarceration by the US state for treason.