Peter Redgrove – författare

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.

This collection marks a fascinating point in the poetic career of the late Peter Redgrove, when - at the age of seventy - he decided to strike out in a thrilling new direction. Using a liberating stepped verse form, he opens up new paths in fresh territory, while consolidating his position as one of the finest poets of the natural world. The questing eye of his imagination is in constant motion: the book is full of doors and stairs and wheels, the movement of light and water, the world's daily transformations. Even his characters are shape-changers - the doctors, dentists, chemists and undertakers are all, in their way, magicians. And, evident throughout the collection, is an undertow of mortality - notably in the extraordinarily moving poems about Redgrove's late father: 'his knowledge went, and mine followed,/ Catch it before/ It leaves like a ghost,/ on these stepped verses'.

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.

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.

This novel is a true story. There are two men in one man, held together by their mutual skin. Their embattled state is healed by the one energy called magick, love, sex, perversion, justice, cruelty, god, poetry, atomic hydrogen, celestial holography, and by the lady who leaves him with a picture of herself that the author must keep in good repair. His orders are that, apart from herself, the only thing constant is change, and he testifies that 'my pen, albeit it stinks of ignorance, faithfully speaks of deeds, some of which I have heard of, but most of which I have seen with my own eyes, and felt with my own skin.' 'In the Country of the Skin' is full of Godstuff. The language both initiates and communicates. Communicating what initiations? What is in front of your nose. And what was there from before birth, sweating with fear and joy-singing like monkeys and archbishops. Doors opening. Walls uncoupling. A long drink of acorn-juice for the know-all, to cure him of his malady. You with the apparitions, meet Dovetail Crime Robert, along with Silas, Teresa, Jonas, Sarah, the Apple-Colonel and Whanging Jill.'In the Country of the Skin' offers participation in a vision that sees beyond the opposites of life and death. To read it is to participate, to participate in it is to be renewed. It is a book that not only says things, but brings them about as well. The book comes with a new introduction by Pascale Petit. 'What it is, essentially, is a long contemplative interior monologue, flushed and vitalised by the full force of Redgrove's astonishingly unique and inventive imagination - his feel for the oozing, rippling, rustling plasticity of natural forces, his celebratory, quasi-mystical inwardness with the stuff and process of sensual life' (The Tablet) 'His imagery is often surprising and beautiful - it has a brilliance and intensity one cannot but recommend.' TLS Peter Redgrove (1932-2003) worked in several interlinked fields: as a poet, novelist, playwright, and in psychological practice. He believed creative, psychological and scientific work are aspects of the same common study, and his insights are profound, illuminating and constantly exciting. He received many awards during his life and was especially honoured by receiving the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry in 1996.

The Terrors of Dr Treviles is the story of a vocation and a quest. The hero, Gregory Treviles, is a doctor whose healing gift is a terrifying and vivid imagination. His quest is to explore wherever his images lead and to discover in so doing the real use of these bizarre energies; the question he asks himself is 'And whom does this Grail serve?' His quest becomes entwined with the lives of his brilliant red-headed stepdaughter Robyn, a molecular biologist who is also a witch; of another doctor, Brid Hare, who hides a secret she believes is shameful; and the deathly life of Trevile's deceased wife, Mamie. The energy liberated by Trevile's imagination changes all these lives, and involves a foolish saintly clergyman, Alex Bodkin, and many other creatures, such as blood-magic, slapstick comedy, Laurel and Hardy, Satan, and the University of Cornwall. The Terrors of Dr Treviles is a romance of Science and the Supernatural; of ordinary but gifted people exploring the dark sides of their gifts in order to bring them into the light. The book also contains an introduction by the late Brian Louis Pearce.'Peter Redgrove and Penelope Shuttle are a combined writing force who also greatly enrich fiction in The Terrors of Dr Treviles. I can't pluck from the wholeness of their book who contributed what, but altogether it has a rejoicing openness that is remarkable.' (The Times) 'genuine imaginative originality and verbal power' (The Guardian) Peter Redgrove (1932-2003) worked in several interlinked fields: as a poet, novelist, playwright, and in psychological practice. He believed creative, psychological and scientific work are aspects of the same common study, and his insights are profound, illuminating and constantly exciting. He received many awards during his life and was especially honoured by receiving the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry in 1996. Penelope Shuttle has lived in Cornwall since 1970 and is the widow of Peter Redgrove. Her 'Selected Poems' appeared in 1998 and her collection 'A Leaf Out Of His Book' in 1999, both of which were Poetry Book Society Recommendations. A new collection, 'Redgrove's Wife', was recently published.

A mysterious murder is committed aboard a luxury liner; suspicion of guilt spreads among the passengers; a gold watch is found ticking away inside the death-wound; the lives of those involved are changed by their closeness to a violent death, even after the apparent murderer has been discovered. 'The Glass Cottage' is an unusual mystery story that takes the reader into strange byways of emtion, and introduces them to many odd and memorable characters: the mad professor, the widow who talks with Goddess, the perverted ship's doctor, the poet interested in menstruation, the actor, the lover, the immensely freckled psychologist, the ship's spirit, the murdered girl and, not least, the great liner itself, the S.S. Messenger. The novel comes with a new introduction by co-author Penelope Shuttle. 'The Glass Cottage is full of marvellous writing, especially where concrete if esoteric experience is described.' The Listener 'Ablaze with fantastic, self-propogating ideas, strange dimensions, absurdities - a rewarding novel for all but the timidest readers.'(The Birmingham Post) Peter Redgrove (1932-2003) worked in several interlinked fields: as a poet, novelist, playwright, and in psychological practice. He believed creative, psychological and scientific work are aspects of the same common study, and his insights are profound, illuminating and constantly exciting. He received many awards during his life and was especially honoured by receiving the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry in 1996. Penelope Shuttle has lived in Cornwall since 1970 and is the widow of Peter Redgrove. Her 'Selected Poems' appeared in 1998 and her collection 'A Leaf Out Of His Book' in 1999, both of which were Poetry Book Society Recommendations. A new collection, 'Redgrove's Wife', was recently published.

This is a funny, violent book - but it is also a Morality. Geoffrey Glass, a man with a terrible secret, comes to Petroc, a village in the West Country. There is a 'plague of witches' - madness by possession - that begins to rage shortly after he has arrived. Glass' secret gives him a strange power of control over these witches, and with its aid he founds a new shamanistic religion which spreads worldwide. However, Glass' secret is a stumbling-block to his friends and a provocation to his enemies, who force him to reveal it in a climax which is both weird and moving. Peter Redgrove wrote this story of horror and the occult in the belief that in going all out for a total experience - in going rather further than such stories normally do - he would draw attention to the real themes that are merely undercurrents in most modern stories of the supernatural. There is a strong factual basis for this remarkable fiction that makes it in no way less entertaining, but considerably more horrifying. The book also contains an introduction by Jay Ramsay. 'It is the sheer exuberance which is refreshing, the sense of a writer luxuriating in language, releasing a torrent of coruscating imagery.'(TLS) 'Whatever Peter Redgrove writers is always compelling reading.' (Books and Bookmen) Peter Redgrove (1932-2003) worked in several interlinked fields: as a poet, novelist, playwright, and in psychological practice. He believed creative, psychological and scientific work are aspects of the same common study, and his insights are profound, illuminating and constantly exciting. He received many awards during his life and was especially honoured by receiving the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry in 1996.

George Pfoundes is the greatest hypnotist of his generation. He has invented an extraordinary machine, the Pfoudnes Oscilloscope, which uses the resources of television technology to achieve miraculous cures by hypnotism, even to healing the blind. Pfoundes believes that hypnotism can raise the dead: he is obsessed with the possibilities - so much enhanced by his invention - of this modern magic. Dying, he hypnotises his daughter, Angela, with his great Oscilloscope, and gives her a hypnotic command to find some means of bringing him back from the grave. How can Angela ever free herself from the posthumous personality of this terrible Father, who dies even as he holds her in the hypnotic trance? In this novel Peter Redgrove explores the fascinating world of the strange powers of the mind revealed by hypnosis. He examines the dilemmas of both hypnotiser and hypnotised, as it might be any parent and any child, and takes some side-swipes at television's power over us all. With his customary mixture of bizarre invention, profound feeling and sexual gusto, he shows how even such an awesome Father can be conquered. The book comes with a new introduction by Cliff Ashcroft.'The author is a sorcerer who entices the mesmerised reader into the realms of magic and imagination. The reader is promptly inveigled into the extraordinary world of the occult by a plainness of approach that is in itself quite uncanny.' (The Spectator) 'Dreams, trances, heightened sexual awareness and religious ecstasy are presented with plain assurance and total conviction.' (The Observer) Peter Redgrove (1932-2003) worked in several interlinked fields: as a poet, novelist, playwright, and in psychological practice. He believed creative, psychological and scientific work are aspects of the same common study, and his insights are profound, illuminating and constantly exciting. He received many awards during his life and was especially honoured by receiving the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry in 1996.

What neglected powers lie behind the small phobias and fetishes, the minor perversities and self-inflicted accidents of ordinary life? Guy and Matthew decide to find out. For Matthew, however, it is a serious and urgent matter. He is an alcoholic, and has just had an appalling attack of the DTs. His family doctor severely warns him, but he is also given extraordinarily helpful advice by a more sinister doctor: 'think of bees'. The two friends decide to help each other give up drink - by occult means. They will try to relinquish the ecstasies of drink and replace them with the visions of dowsing and spiritualism. It turns out that alcohol was a defence against deeper powers. Both men become superb dowsers, attracting swarming natural forces which are almost too strong for them. Both receive automatic writing from a murderous disemmbodied spirit. New thresholds of personality are revealed, but there is the sinister Institute for Study, also interested in bees, which is waiting to take advantage of these developments. Guy's wife Millie, a detached observer, is drawn closer and closer to the centre of these strange and terrible events.'The Beekeepers' is an investigation of the magic and meaning of imagination. In it Peter Redgrove explores those forces which many consider to be 'occult' but which he believes to be natural forces concealed from our use by convention and timidity. The book also has an introduction by Peter Ackroyd. 'Redgrove has written one of his most hilarious and unsettling books yet.' (The Guardian) 'The Beekeepers' is filled with violence, madness, ghosts. And yet Redgrove's writing is powerful enough to make these spirits live, and The Beekeepers remains throughout an intriguing book.' (The Sunday Times) Peter Redgrove (1932-2003) worked in several interlinked fields: as a poet, novelist, playwright, and in psychological practice. He believed creative, psychological and scientific work are aspects of the same common study, and his insights are profound, illuminating and constantly exciting. He received many awards during his life and was especially honoured by receiving the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry in 1996.

In this daring and ebullient novel, Peter Redgrove tells the story of the mysterious Institute of Facilitation, which is haunted by the elusive Director, Jacqueline Dimitrios, MD, who may be the richest woman in the world. She may also be dead, murdered, as her staff often pose as Madame Dimitros, and are instructed to deny they are not Madame. Undaunted by her mystery, three suitors enter the Institute on the pretence that they are patients, and require to be 'facilitated' until they are well again: they are in fact intent on marrying Madame's money. They are told that they must find in themselves a madness so strange that it will make Madame laugh aloud; then and only then will she marry the fortunate suitor. The Institute was founded, the suitors discover, by a Dr David, who was blown to pieces in a terrorist bombing, but who may still be consulted in the cellar; and the members of staff include 'Sir' Geoffrey, a nude man who has discovered a new use for an old organ; and Daniel, a red-haired homosexual dwarf beemaster masseur who is mortally allergic to stings.Much of the set-up may be a put-up job to conceal Madame's murder; nevertheless, the woman in charge declares that she will marry one of these men, and the reader is invited to guess who that might be, and why he is chosen. In this novel Peter Redgrove combines a fresh look at the mystery story and the psychological thriller with a strategy that declares that whatever desperate people may invent in fantasy, it can never be quite untrue. The book comes with a new introduction by Norman Jope. 'With The Facilitators we are deep in wizard's country. The only measure of sorcery is whether or not it works, and when used in fiction it faces a double challenge, the fiction has to work too. Peter Redgrove is one of the few living writers known to me who can make this happen. He is not so much a mystic as an explorer into undiscovered human territory.' (The Guardian) 'Peter Redgrove is a farceur given to psychic high-jinks beneath which runs a subsong of wild wisdom.' (New Statesman) Peter Redgrove (1932-2003) worked in several interlinked fields: as a poet, novelist, playwright, and in psychological practice.He believed creative, psychological and scientific work are aspects of the same common study, and his insights are profound, illuminating and constantly exciting. He received many awards during his life and was especially honoured by receiving the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry in 1996.