Peter Robinson

Peter Robinson was born in Salford, Lancashire, in 1953. Whilst still at secondary school in Liverpool, he was already writing, editing and publishing poetry, a passion that continues to this day. He was awarded a degree in English literature at York University and then transferred to Cambridge University in October 1975 to undertake a doctorate in modern poetry. He quickly became immersed in the Cambridge poetry scene and began helping to organise the Cambridge Poetry Festival as well as co-editing the poetry magazine Perfect Bound.  After teaching at Aberystwyth and Cambridge Universities, Peter was offered a visiting lectureship at Kyoto University in Japan. He then spent 18 years in the country teaching English language and literature, 14 of them in the Faculty of Arts and Letters at Tohoku University, Sendai. He returned to the UK in 2007 to teach at Reading University where he is Professor of English and American Literature.

His first poetry collection published by Carcanet was This Other Life (1988), which went on to win the Cheltenham Prize for that same year. Carcanet subsequently published three more of his collections: Entertaining Fates (1992), Lost and Found (1997) and About Time Too (2001), and a Selected Poems (2003) whilst he was in Japan. Peter has published twenty-five books of poetry as well as eight of poetry translations (mostly from Italian); he has written six volumes of critical prose as well as aphorisms, short stories, and literary fiction. He has also acted as editor for twenty published books of other people’s work. His Collected Poems 1976-2016 is published by Shearsman Books (2017), and his most recent poetry publication is Bonjour Mr Inshaw (Two Rivers Press, 2020), in collaboration with the artist David Inshaw.