John Norton

1936 - 2015

John Norton

July 4, 1936 - August 9, 2015

San Francisco poet John Norton died August 9, 2015 with his wife and longtime partner, artist Anne Subercaseaux by his side. John was born on July 4, 1936 and grew up in Boston Massachusetts. He graduated from Boston College and the University of Pennsylvania with an M.A. and Ph.D. in English Literature and taught for several years at the University of California, Riverside. John moved to San Francisco in the 1970s.

John earned his living as a technical writer in Silicon Valley for many years, but like Wallace Stevens before him, his true vocation was poetry. He was a well-known figure in the San Francisco literary community and involved in the 1980s nascent Â'New Narrative' literary movement.

John's poems and stories appeared in a variety of small magazines and literary journals, including New American Writing, Kayak, Beatitudes, On the Bus and Processed World, among others. He served as board president of Small Press Traffic Literary Arts Center in San Francisco and the San Francisco Irish Arts Foundation, and helped organize the Crossroads Irish American Festival. John gave readings of his work in San Francisco, Berkeley, Los Angeles, Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Riverside, Rochester, NY and Toulouse, France.

He was the author of three volumes of poetry and a novel: Air Transmigra in 2010; Re:Marriage (novel), in 2000; The Light at the End of the Bog, for which he won an American Book Award in 1990; and the chapbook Posthum(or)ous, in 1985.

John's gregarious nature and raucous laugh, his wry sense of humor and wit, both in person and on the page, reflected his Boston Catholic Irish childhood and his curiosity and knowledge of world politics and literature. He loved to travel. He and Anne lived in a town outside of Toulouse, France during summers for the past ten years.

John is survived by his wife, Anne Cunningham Subercaseaux; his stepson, Adrian Subercaseaux; his in-laws of the Cunningham and Mignon families who adopted him as one of their own, and the extended family of Irish cousins in Athlone, Ireland.

John is also survived by his many friends and literary colleagues in San Francisco and the Bay Area, including members of Robert Glück's writers' workshop at Small Press Traffic on 24th St., a former Proust group which met at the Mechanics Institute in San Francisco, and those who were part of a bi-monthly writing workshop which he graciously hosted in his home for several years. John will be greatly missed by his family, friends and colleagues, but he leaves behind a significant body of work to be shared and memories of all his friendships.

John's family would like to thank the oncology staff at UCSF Mt Zion, UCSF Medical Center at Parnassus, and the Jewish Home in San Francisco for their care for John over the last year and a half and towards the end of his life.

Services to be announced.

Donations in John's memory can be made to:
Papaza Center for Children with Special Needs: Jacmel, Haiti: http://pazapa.org/
The Poetry Center at San Francisco State University: http://www.sfsu.edu/~poetry/
Kelly Writers' House, University of Pennsylvania: www.writing.upenn.edu/~wh/.