J. H. Prynne

Jeremy Halvard Prynne (born 24 June 1936) is a British poet closely associated with the British Poetry Revival.

Prynne grew up in Kent and was educated at St Dunstan's College, Catford, and Jesus College, Cambridge.[1] He is a Life Fellow of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. He retired in October 2005 from his posts teaching English Literature as a Lecturer and University Reader in English Poetry for the University of Cambridge and as Director of Studies in English for Gonville and Caius College; in September 2006 he retired from his position as Librarian of the College.

Prynne's early influences include Donald Davie and Charles Olson. He was one of the key figures in the Cambridge group among the British Poetry Revival poets and a major contributor to The English Intelligencer. His first book, Force of Circumstance and Other Poems, was published in 1962, but Prynne has excluded it from his canon. His Poems (1982) collected all the work he wanted to keep in print, beginning with Kitchen Poems (1968), with expanded and updated editions appearing in 1999, 2005, and 2015. 2020 to 2022 has seen an unprecedented burst of productivity, with the publication of over two dozen small press chapbooks and several substantial collections, including book-length poems, sequences and a poetic novel.

In addition to his poetry, Prynne has published some critical and academic prose. A transcription of a 1971 lecture on Olson's Maximus Poems at Simon Fraser University has had wide circulation.[2] His longer works include a monograph on Ferdinand de Saussure, Stars, Tigers and the Shape of Words,[3] and self-published, very erudite book-length commentaries on individual poems by Shakespeare (Sonnets 94 and 15), George Herbert ("Love III") and Wordsworth ("The Solitary Reaper"). His long and passionate interest in China (he was a close friend and colleague of Joseph Needham) is reflected in an essay on New Songs from a Jade Terrace, an anthology of early Chinese love poetry, which was included in the second edition of the book from Penguin (1982). His collected poetry includes a poem composed in classical Chinese under the name Pu Ling-en (蒲龄恩), reproduced in his own calligraphy. In 2016, a lengthy interview with Prynne about his poetic practice appeared in The Paris Review as part of its "The Art of Poetry" series.[4]