The Life of Peter Redgrove

A Lucid Dreamer

'Redgrove's abundance and stamina as a conjuror of strangeness seem to me to be greatly under-admired, yet that has perhaps come about because of the very opulence of his imagination.' Seamus Heaney

Roberts is probably Redgrove's greatest admirer and his book does his man proud... Generous and insightful.

Redgrove's abundance and stamina as a conjuror of strangeness seem to me to be greatly under-admired, yet that has perhaps come about because of the very opulence of his imagination.

A Lucid Dreamer is sensible, readable, and sympathetic to its subject, without disguising his faults.

A Lucid Dreamer offers a sympathetic and accurate biography of the man in a book that traverses some pretty strange territory without loosing either its sense of humour or its respect for its subject.

Roberts is probably Redgrove’s greatest admirer and his book does his man proud … generous and insightful … if he pushes things too far in claiming Redgrove as a major talent, no-one in future will dare to describe him as a poor man’s Ted Hughes.

Neil Roberts was born in Manchester and educated in Latymer Upper School, London, and 
Clare College, Cambridge. He is Emeritus Professor of English Literature at the University of Sheffield, where he has taught for thirty-eight years. He wrote the first critical study of Peter Redgrove, The Lover, the Dreamer and the World, and knew the poet well during the last twenty years of his life. His other books include Ted Hughes: A Literary Life, and works on D. H. Lawrence, George Eliot and George Meredith. He lives in Derbyshire. 
 
Peter Redgrove was born in 1932 and studied Natural Sciences at Cambridge. He was also a novelist, playwright and co-author (with Penelope Shuttle) of The Wise Wound, a revolutionary study of the human fertility cycle. Among his many awards were the Guardian Fiction Prize, the Prix Italia and the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry. He died in 2003.

The work of the poet Peter Redgrove is one of the great unexplored treasures of late twentieth century literature. His prolific output presents an intriguing variety of personae: magician, scientist, lover, psychologist, joker, madman. It is only now, with the publication of his Collected Poems and this biography, that we can see how and why these personae developed - and discover the full depth and range of this visionary writer. 
 
Born into an apparently conventional middle-class family that was in reality deeply disturbed, the poet finally emerged: transforming himself from the neurotic, Oedipal young scientist, through a process of mental breakdown, insulin coma therapy, erotic revelation and the discovery of poetic companionship at Cambridge - and particularly his friendship and rivalry with Ted Hughes. 
 
Neil Roberts explores the inner story of this emergence, and Redgrove's later development through marriage, family life, the fellowship of the 'Group', alcoholic excess, infidelity and marital breakdown to his triumphant later partnership with Penelope Shuttle. We also discover, for the first time, some darker secrets: his fascination with Aleister Crowley, his damaged and damaging relationship with his father, and the lifelong sexual fetish which he called the 'Game'. Drawing on the poet's intimate journals and correspondence, and interviews with family, friends and colleagues, A Lucid Dreamer tells the exceptionally inward and revealing story of an astonishing creative life.

The Harper

The last collection from one of the most celebrated post-war poets.

Redgrove's language can light up the page

Redgrove is thunderously, exhilaratingly good

He is recognised today as one of the few poets capable of sustained rapture, a heirophant of alchemical mysteries, chronicler of sexual ecstasies, witness to sensual, synaesthetic delights beyond the reach of most of us

Redgrove's strengths are a clairvoyant creativity, glittering images and glittering risk...wonderful imaginative leaps of seeing, glancing epiphanies...or sustained surrealities which etch the surprisingness of the world

I would use the old-fashioned term 'genius' of Redgrove

Peter Redgrove was born in 1932. Apart from producing over thirty full-length collections of poetry he also wrote novels, plays and non-fiction - including The Wise Wound with Penelope Shuttle. Among the many awards he has received are the Guardian Fiction Prize, the Prix Italia and the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry. He received an honorary degree from the University of Sheffield, which holds an archive of the poet's papers. He died in 2003.

Peter Redgrove, who died in June 2003, was a friend and contemporary of Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath and became one of the most celebrated and prolific post-war poets - regarded by many as a true visionary. 
 
The Harper, which gathers together his last poems, is a collection still charged with characteristic energy, eroticism and transforming imagination. Redgrove's language thrills with thunder, rain and electricity, the air heavy with perfumes and balsams, wasps and spiders - and reading these poems is uncannily like re-entering a dream. Peter Redgrove made us look at our world with fresh eyes, and he changed our perception forever.

Peter Redgrove

Like standing under a waterfall in full spate.

Peter Redgrove is a major poet of the English language, an imaginative colossus...He deserves to be as well-known and celebrated as Hughes and Heaney.

Redgrove was a lavishly gifted poet and we should celebrate him.

Fling yourself into it as you would dive into the sea. It throws you and rolls you about.

Peter Redgrove, who died in 2003, was one of the most prolific of post-war poets and, as this Collected Poems reveals, one of the finest. A friend and contemporary of Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath in the early 1950s, Redgrove was regarded by many as their equal, and his work has been championed by a wide variety of writers - from Margaret Drabble to Colin Wilson, Douglas Dunn to Seamus Heaney. Ted Hughes once wrote warmly to Redgrove of 'how important you've been to me. You've no idea how much - right from the first time we met.' 
 
In this first Collected Poems, Neil Roberts has gathered together the best poems from twenty-six volumes of verse - from The Collector (1959) to the three books published posthumously. The result is an unearthed treasure trove - poems that find new and thrilling ways of celebrating the natural world and the human condition, poems that dazzle with their visual imagination, poems that show the huge range and depth of the poet's art. In Redgrove's poetry there is a unique melding of the erotic, the terrifying, the playful, the strange, and the strangely familiar; his originality and energy is unparalleled in our time and his work was the work of a true visionary.

Peter Redgrove

Praise for Collected Poems

Redgrove's language can light up a page.

No other poet shows life so intensely.

Like standing under a waterfall in full spate.

Redgrove's language can light up a page.

No other poet shows life so intensely.

Like standing under a waterfall in full spate.

Redgrove's language can light up a page.

No other poet shows life so intensely.

Like standing under a waterfall in full spate.

Books by Peter Redgrove

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