Mark Huband 1963-2021

Photograph: Pako Mera/Alamy

It was with great shock and sorrow that we learned the news of Mark Huband's sudden passing in November. Respected author and journalist who had worked extensively across Africa, Mark was also a very talented poet. Author of eight books on the Middle East, Africa and global affairs, Mark's debut collection of poetry, American Road, was published by Live Canon in 2014. A book-length poem – The Siege of Monrovia (Live Canon, 2017) – was followed by three pamphlets: Skinny White Kids (2017), Exile (2018) and The Candidate (2020), an account of his experience as a parliamentary election candidate. His most recent pamphlet, Milestones, a virtuoso sequence of sonnets in dialogue with Bob Dylan's work from 1963 to 2020 was published by Yew Tree Press in October 2021.

Many of Dialect’s friends will remember Mark from his readings at the Museum in the Park, Stroud, and will have shared work and heard Marks work in progress on Dialect's Throwing Clay course last spring. He also joined us for our Wordsworthian walk along the River Wye in July.

Mark's friend, Philip Rush, shares a few words below. 

Sincere condolences to his family. Go well, Mark.

Several years ago, Mark introduced himself to me at a poetry reading; since then Yew Tree Press has published a number of his pamphlets. I have always been grateful for his support and energy.

It is probably not good to say this so bluntly, but one of the big things I felt towards Mark was envy. He was charming, principled, good looking, articulate and insightful, and he was exciting.

I last saw Mark when he read to me the second section of a long poem he was writing. A poem related to his walking the Pyrenees from the west to the east. We sat in the lounge with a small fire burning and a couple of lights on, and he read.

It was a radio programme. The experience of combating the elements, of climbing against gravity and of holding one’s nerve; all that was brought into a cosy room. Mark‘s poem opens out into bigger histories and reaches, it seems to me, for spiritual resonances. In this work, Mark is a writer collecting his thoughts, of course, but he is also a hermit testing himself in the wilderness.

~ Philip Rush