Peter Pegnall, a poet and mentor who brought literature to prisons and care homes, has died aged 76. He was known for his stark, untrammelled lines that illuminate human feeling and fragility.
A Life Devoted to Poetry and People
Pegnall resembled a tousled Dylan Thomas, though unlike Thomas, he stopped drinking. His readings were charged with the measured music of his verse. He wrote luminous essays, and his critical authority was commanding.
It was people far from the literary scene to whom he took poetry. He delivered readings from Wordsworth's Tintern Abbey to Bukowski's Bluebird in Wakefield and Lewes prisons, where he was a visiting writer, and in care homes and workshops in cafes on the Norfolk coast.
Early Life and Education
Born in London, the middle of three sons to Edna (nee Westbrook), a homemaker, and Stanley Pegnall, general manager of the Firestone tyre company, Peter was educated at Latymer Upper school in west London, where he revelled in drama. He never abandoned theatre; some years ago, he had to be deterred from joining a troupe of actors in an outdoor performance of A Midsummer Night's Dream at Burnham Deepdale in Norfolk.
He attended evening classes to take his A-levels and studied English at the University of Ulster, Coleraine, where he was tutored by Seamus Heaney. He later took a BPhil in Shakespeare at York University in 1975. Peter taught at secondary schools in Brighton and Reading, and at the universities of Sussex, Lancaster, and Leeds. From 2018, he worked as a Latin teacher at Fakenham academy.
Literary Achievements and Later Years
Peter used the prototype of Seamus Heaney and James Simmons's “crumbling mansion by the sea”, the House of the Poets in Portmuck, County Antrim, and translated it into the Casa dos Poetas, an Anglo-Portuguese festival that he founded in Silves, in the Algarve, in 1994, after his doctor ordered him to spend his winters in a warmer climate.
Lapwing Publications, Belfast, brought out six of his eight poetry collections; two others were published by Blackwater Press and the Hedgehog Press. In 2021 Peter edited an anthology, Pestilence: Poems About the Plague, and a translation from the French of the poems of René Noyau. In 2022 he was elected to Sheringham town council, and was responsible for the arts.
Death and Legacy
Peter was found after a cliff fall on the “ancient chamber of flint and seashell”, on the beach there. He is survived by a daughter, Eliza, from his marriage to Kay Warbrick, which ended in divorce, two granddaughters, Susanna and Mimi, brothers Brian and Gerald, and his mother.
