. Gibson was born in
Hexham,
Northumberland. His parents were Elizabeth Judith Frances (born Walton) and John Pattison Gibson. Her father was a chemist who was interested in photography and antiquarianism. His elder sister
Elizabeth, who became his teacher and mentor, also became a published poet. He left the north for London in 1914 after his mother died. He had been publishing poems in magazines since 1895, and his first collections in book form were published by
Elkin Mathews in 1902. His collections of verse plays and dramatic poems
The Stonefolds and
On The Threshold were published by the Samurai Press (of
Cranleigh) in 1907, followed next year by the book of poems,
The Web of Life. Despite his residence in London, and later in
Gloucestershire, many of Gibson's poems both then and later, have Northumberland settings: ''Hexham's Market Cross
; Hareshaw
; and The Kielder Stone''. Others deal with poverty and passion amid wild Northumbrian landscapes. Still others are devoted to fishermen, industrial workers and miners, often alluding to local ballads and the rich folk-song heritage of the
North East. In London, he met both
Edward Marsh and
Rupert Brooke, becoming a close friend and later Brooke's
literary executor (with
Lascelles Abercrombie and
Walter de la Mare). This was at the period when the first
Georgian Poetry anthology was being hatched. Gibson was one of the insiders. During the early part of his writing life, Wilfrid Wilson Gibson wrote poems that featured the "macabre". One such poem is "
Flannan Isle", based on
a real-life mystery. Gibson was one of the founders of the
Dymock poets, a group of writers who lived in and around the village of
Dymock, on the Gloucestershire/Herefordshire border, in the years immediately before the outbreak of the
First World War. Gibson also published plays, as well as several prose works. For instance, he wrote and argued beautifully about the merit of verse at the time of World War II. He wrote a piece of criticism on
Italian Nationalism and English Letters by Harry W. Rudman regarding the contributions made by Italian exiles in England to English literature, which were in the form of poetry by and large. He also wrote criticism on
The Burning Oracle: Studies in the Poetry of Action by G. Wilson Knight, wherein he commends the fact that Knight sees the creative energy of living writers not only in the creation of artworks, but also in the creation of life itself. ==Death and reputation==