Peter Reading
Peter Reading (27 July 1946 – 17 November 2011) was an English poet and the author of 26 collections of poetry. He is known for his deep interest in nature and the use of classical metres. He was widely regarded as an influential alternative presence on the UK poetry scene, and The Oxford Companion to Twentieth-Century Poetry describes his verse as "strongly anti-romantic, disenchanted and usually satirical".
Also recorded as Peter Gray Reading
Peter Reading
- Born
- 1946 · Liverpool.
- Died
- 2011
- Nationality
- United Kingdom
- Occupation
- poet · writer
- Fields
- poetry
- Education
- Liverpool College of Art · Alsop High School
- Honours
- Cholmondeley Award
- Languages
- English
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Documentary summary
Peter Reading (27 July 1946 – 17 November 2011) was an English poet and the author of 26 collections of poetry. He is known for his deep interest in nature and the use of classical metres. He was widely regarded as an influential alternative presence on the UK poetry scene, and The Oxford Companion to Twentieth-Century Poetry describes his verse as "strongly anti-romantic, disenchanted and usually satirical".
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Note VALÉORINE
Peter Reading (1946–2011) was a British poet and writer. The poet was born in Liverpool.
Peter Reading studied at Alsop High School and Liverpool College of Art. The poet was active in poetry.
Languages used include English. Peter Reading received Cholmondeley Award.
Composed from admitted, traceable facts · 26 September 2026
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wikidata · Q705197 · wikipedia · Peter Reading
In this article
Background
Background
Interviewed by Robert Potts, he described his work as a combination of "painstaking care" and "misanthropy".
Reading was educated at Alsop High School. After studying painting at Liverpool College of Art, he worked as a schoolteacher at Ruffwood School, Kirkby (1967–68), and at Liverpool College of Art, where he taught Art History (1968–70). He then worked for 22 years as a weighbridge operator at an animal feed mill in Shropshire, a job which left him free to think, until he was sacked for refusing to wear a uniform introduced by new owners of the business. His only break was a two-year residency at Sunderland Polytechnic (1981–83). After leaving Liverpool, he lived for 40 years in various parts of Shropshire, in later years in Little Stretton, near Ludlow. The benevolence of America’s Lannan Foundation rescued him from poverty. He was the first writer to hold the one-year Lannan writing residency in Marfa, Texas (in 1999), and is the only British poet to have won the Lannan Award for Poetry twice, in 1990 and 2004, as well as the only poet to read an entire life’s work for the Foundation's DVD archive – his filmed readings for Lannan (made in 2001 and 2010) of 26 poetry collections make up the only archive of its kind. His 1997 collection Work in Regress was shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize.
Identity and overview
Identity and overview
The following is established of the heading itself.
Catalogued output
Publications and editions
Institutional cataloguing adds that peter Reading is recorded with the occupation poet. It is also recorded that peter Reading is recorded with the occupation writer. Recorded as a citizen of United Kingdom. It is also recorded that peter Reading is recorded with the gender male. It is also recorded that peter Reading was born on 27 July 1946. Institutional cataloguing adds that peter Reading died on 17 November 2011.
Poetry collections
Poetry collections
• Water and Waste (1970) • For the Municipality's Elderly (1974) • The Prison Cell & Barrel Mystery (1976) • Nothing for Anyone (1977) • Fiction (1979) • Tom o'Bedlam's Beauties (1981) • Diplopic (1983) • 5x5x5x5x5 (1983) • C (1984) • Ukulele Music (1985) • Going On (1985) • Essential Reading (1986) • Stet (1986) • Final Demands (1988) • Perduta Gente (1989) • Shitheads (1989) • Three in One (1991) • Evagatory (1992) • Last Poems (1994) • Collected Poems Vol 1: 1970-1984 (1995) • Eschatological (1996) • Collected Poems Vol 2: 1985-1996 (1996) • Chinoiserie (1997) • Work in Regress (1997) • Apopthegmatic (1999) • Ob (1999) • Repetitious (1999) • Marfan (2000) • [untitled] (2001) • Faunal (2002) • Civil (2002) • Collected Poems Vol 3: 1997-2003 (2003) • -273.15 (2005) • Vendange Tardive (2010)
Documents and archives
Primary material
Documents and archives
Institutional database
- Wikidata, structured authority record Q705197: Peter Reading
Scholarly · Wikimedia Foundation
reference work
- “Peter Reading”, English Wikipedia, consulted as further reading
Reputable secondary · Wikipedia
Awards
• Cholmondeley Award (1978) • Dylan Thomas Award (1983), for Diplopic • Whitbread Prize for Poetry (1986), for Stet • Lannan Literary Award for Poetry, 1990 and 2004.
Notes from the source article
Cited by Wikipedia
Notes from the source article
These works are cited by the source article, in its own numbering. They are recorded as its citations, not as sources VALÉORINE has verified.
- 1.Daily Telegraph. Obituary: Peter Reading. 22 November 2011.
- 2.Keith Tuma, Anthology of Twentieth-Century British and Irish Poetry (2001), p. 725.
- 3.Martin Seymour-Smith "Reading, Peter" in Ian Hamilton (ed.) The Oxford Companion to Twentieth-Century Poetry, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994, p.443
- 4.Robert Potts "An Interview with Peter Reading", Oxford Poetry, OP V.3 [Winter 1990
- 5.British Council biography for Peter Reading.
- 6.Brownjohn, Alan. Reading, Peter Gray (1946–2011).
- 7.Peter Reading (Lannan).
Bibliography printed in the source article · 1
References
Citations
References
Each reference names the institution holding it, so a reader may go to the document itself.
Institutional database
Wikidata, structured authority record Q705197: Peter ReadingWikimedia Foundation
Institutional witnessreference work
Secondary witness
Further particulars
Held on the record
Further particulars
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This entry is compiled from 5 catalogued sources across 3 independent registers. The registers consulted are Crossref registry, Wikipedia and Wikimedia Foundation. Every statement above is held against the register that stated it; where the registers are silent, the entry is silent.
The Encyclopedia exists whether or not anything is for sale. Corrections are recorded rather than overwritten, and every version of this record is kept. Published 19 August 2026.
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