Education
Reading was educated at Alsop High School.
(In this Poetry Book Society Special Commendation collecti...)
In this Poetry Book Society Special Commendation collection from the 1990 Lannan Literary Award winner for poetry, Peter Reading, the scourge of Britain's sham, uncaring society, sentences himself to a year's exile deep in the empty heart of Texas. This richly observed, unsparingly caustic booklength poem, presents the unflattering but grimly affectionate portrait of the hick town of Marfa (pop. 2,474). Here are cowpokes and Bible bashers, crazies in Chevies, trigger-happy Border Patrolmen, and gabby old-timers in Ray's Bar, all intent on bending Reading's ear. He takes it all in, just as the slaughtered Indians and despised 'Spiks' have done, but this suspicious stranger answers back. In blackly ironic, highly sophisticated poetry, created in their own language, out of their own drawling mouths, Reading's rednecks damn themselves in this latter-day, divine comedy set in an arid all-American wasteland.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1852245166/?tag=2022091-20
Reading was educated at Alsop High School.
He is known for his choice of ugly subject matter, and use of classical metres. The Oxford Companion to Twentieth-Century Poetry describes his verse as "strongly anti-romantic, disenchanted and usually satirical". Interviewed by Robert Potts, he described his work as a combination of "painstaking care" and "misanthropy".
After studying painting at Liverpool College of Art, he worked as a schoolteacher in Liverpool (1967-1968) and at Liverpool College of Art, where he taught Art History (1968-1970).
He then worked for 22 years as a weighbridge operator at an animal feedmill in Shropshire, a job which left him free to think, until he was sacked for refusing to wear a uniform introduced by new owners of the business. His only break was a two-year residency at Sunderland Polytechnic (1981-1983).
After leaving Liverpool, he lived for 40 years in various parts of Shropshire, in later years in Little Stretton, near Ludlow. The benevolence of America’s Lannan Foundation rescued him from poverty.
(In this Poetry Book Society Special Commendation collecti...)
