Peter Scupham (24 February 1933 – 11 June 2022) was a British poet.
Life
Scupham was born in
Bootle
Bootle (pronounced ) is a town in the Metropolitan Borough of Sefton, Merseyside, England, which had a population of 51,394 in 2011; the wider Parliamentary constituency had a population of 98,449.
Historically part of Lancashire, Bootle's ...
on 24 February 1933 to John and Dorothy Scupham.
The family moved to Cambridgeshire and he was educated at the
Perse School, Cambridge, and
St George's School, Harpenden.
After National Service with the
RAOC
The Royal Army Ordnance Corps (RAOC) was a corps of the British Army. At its renaming as a Royal Corps in 1918 it was both a supply and repair corps. In the supply area it had responsibility for weapons, armoured vehicles and other military equip ...
, he studied at
Emmanuel College, Cambridge. He taught at Skegness Grammar School, and then became Head of English at
St. Christopher School, Letchworth. His first marriage was to Carola Nance Braunholtz, the daughter of
Hermann Braunholtz,
CBE
The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a British order of chivalry, rewarding contributions to the arts and sciences, work with charitable and welfare organisations,
and public service outside the civil service. It was established o ...
, Keeper of the Ethnographical Collections at the
British Museum
The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It docum ...
, with whom he had four children. His second wife was Margaret Steward. Together they restored a small derelict Elizabethan Manor house in Norfolk, where they put on plays and created a garden. With
John Mole he founded The Mandeville Press, a small press using traditional letterpress methods of printing. The Press produced hand-set editions of work by
Geoffrey Grigson
Geoffrey Edward Harvey Grigson (2 March 1905 – 25 November 1985) was a British poet, writer, editor, critic, exhibition curator, anthologist and naturalist. In the 1930s he was editor of the influential magazine ''New Verse'', and went on to p ...
,
Anthony Hecht,
John Fuller,
K. W. Gransden, and many others. Its archive is now in the British Library. For many years he ran an antiquarian book business - Mermaid Books - with Margaret Steward, specialising in English Literature, and trading by printed catalogue. Those catalogues were a welcome addition to any potential purchaser's breakfast, often causing them to chortle into their cornflakes at yet another scabrously disrespectful description of some long-dead literary figure. From 2020 onwards, Mermaid Books appeared to be in hiatus, and is now, alas, no longer trading.
His poetry was deftly formal, humane, richly textured and deeply civilized. He was able to see proofs of his final volume shortly before he died. Scupham died on 11 June 2022, at the age of 89.
Awards and honours
* 1990 Elected Fellow of the
Royal Society of Literature
* 1996
Cholmondeley Award
The Cholmondeley Awards () are annual awards for poetry given by the Society of Authors in the United Kingdom. Awards honour distinguished poets, from a fund endowed by the Dowager Marchioness of Cholmondeley in 1966. Since 1991 the award has be ...
* 2009 A portrait of Scupham by photographer
Jemimah Kuhfeld was acquired by the
National Portrait Gallery, London for its permanent collection.
Works
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
Editor
*
Anthologies
*
*
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Scupham, Peter
1933 births
2022 deaths
Alumni of Emmanuel College, Cambridge
British male poets
Fellows of the Royal Society of Literature
Poets from Liverpool