J.H. Prynne

Jeremy Halvard Prynne (born June 24, 1936) is an English 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. 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.

Prynne is a Life Fellow of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. As of October 2005, he had 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.

Poetry

 * Force of Circumstance and Other Poems (1962)
 * Kitchen Poems (1968)
 * Day Light Songs (1968)
 * The White Stones (1969)
 * Fire Lizard (1970)
 * Brass (1971)
 * A Night Square (1971)
 * Into The Day (1972)
 * Wound Response (1974)
 * High Pink on Chrome (1975)
 * News of Warring Clans (1977)
 * Down Where Changed (1979)
 * Poems (1982)
 * The Oval Window (1983)
 * Bands Around the Throat (1987)
 * Word Order (1989)
 * Jie ban mi Shi Hu (1992)
 * Not-You (1993)
 * Her Weasels Wild Returning (1994)
 * For the Monogram (1997)
 * Red D Gypsum (1998)
 * Pearls That Were (1999)
 * Poems (2nd edition, 1999)
 * Triodes (2000)
 * Unanswering Rational Shore (2001)
 * Acrylic Tips (2002)
 * Biting the Air (2003)
 * Blue Slides At Rest (2004)
 * Poems (3rd edition, 2005)
 * To Pollen (2006)
 * STREAK〜〜〜WILLING〜〜〜ENTOURAGE ARTESIAN (2009)
 * SUB SONGS (2010)
 * Kazoo Dreamboats; or, On What There Is (2011)

Prose

 * Stars, Tigers and the Shape of Words (1993)
 * They That Haue Powre to Hurt; A Specimen of a Commentary on Shakespeares Sonnets, 94 (2001)
 * Field Notes: 'The Solitary Reaper' and others (2007)
 * George Herbert, Love III: A Discursive Commentary (2011)
 * Early correspondence and essays in Certain Prose of the English Intelligencer (Cambridge: Mountain, 2012)