J.H. Prynne

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

Prynne's early influences include Charles Olson and Donald Davie. His first book, Force of Circumstance and Other Poems was published in 1962; Prynne has excluded it from his canon. His Poems (1982) collected all the work he wanted to keep in print up to the time of publication, beginning with Kitchen Poems (1968). An expanded and updated version appeared in 1999, with another, further updated, published in 2005, and another in 2015. Prynne was one of the key figures in the Cambridge group of Revival poets and was a major contributor to The English Intelligencer.

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. His longer works include a monograph on Saussure, Stars, Tigers and the Shape of Words and self-published book-length commentaries on poems by Wordsworth (Field Notes: 'The Solitary Reaper' and others) and Shakespeare (They That Haue Powre to Hurt; A Specimen of a Commentary on Shake-speares Sonnets, 94). His essay on New Songs from a Jade Terrace, an anthology of early Chinese love poetry, was included in the second edition of the book from Penguin 1982. He has written poetry in classical Chinese under the name Pu Ling-en. 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.

Prynne is a Life Fellow of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. As of October 2005, he has retired 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; he retired as Librarian of the College at the end of September 2006.

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