The maverick writer and scholar was a pioneer in 60s avant garde circles, and emerged as a cult figure despite an aversion to publicity, and poetry that was hard to parse
Jeremy Halvard Prynne, known as JH Prynne, a maverick figure in British poetry, died on 22 April at the age of 89.
“Jeremy was an extraordinary and original human, which is no surprise because he was an extraordinary and original poet,” said Peter Gizzi, the American poet who introduced a reissue of Prynne’s 1969 collection The White Stones. “The word ‘genius’ gets tossed around, but if anyone was, he certainly was.”
Born in Bromley, Kent, in June 1936, Prynne served two years in the British army before studying English at Cambridge, graduating in 1960. He pursued a fellowship at Harvard before returning to Cambridge, becoming a fellow at Gonville and Caius college. He ultimately became director of studies in English, and for 37 years was also the college librarian.
Prynne’s first collection, Force of Circumstance and Other Poems, was published in 1962. A second, Kitchen Poems, appeared in 1968. Influenced by the likes of Charles Olson, Prynne – in both his teaching and his poems – bridged American postmodern and British poetry circles, and acted as a liberating force on the latter. He was prolific, publishing dozens of collections across the decades, almost exclusively with small presses, and emerged as a cult figure despite his aversion to publicity, interviews, poetry readings and having his photograph taken.
