Peter Pegnall, poet and schoolmaster with a rebellious spirit and sympathy for the ‘unteachable’ child

Peter Pegnall​, who has died aged 76, was a maverick of British poetry who moved around the country organising sparkling literary events while writing self-lacerating poems mocking his own unhappiness.

An encounter with Pegnall was not easily forgotten. His mischievous conversation was punctuated by sudden fortissimo fanfares of laughter. It was a style that – depending on how much alcohol had been consumed – could either rescue or ruin an evening.

Yet he was able to turn it​ to magnificent advantage in the classroom. For decades Pegnall taught English in well-ordered suburban public schools and unruly comprehensives. Naturally disruptive himself, he had a touching rapport with childre​n whom the establishment had decided were unteachable.

Pegnall’s ebullient manner could be deceptive: his imagination sprang out of a rigorous investigation of language, evident not only in his teaching but also in volumes of poems that were admired by Seamus Heaney, Carol Ann Duffy and Andrew Motion. These included Broken Eggs (1995), Through the Rock (2000), Howl: The Silent Movie (2013) and Bright Scarf: Love and Fear (2016).

One of his last poems, “Pegnall’s Inferno” (2022), beckons the reader into the consulting rooms in which doctors tried to treat the depressive illness that forced the author into a semi-reclusive life in the Norfolk seaside town of Sheringham:

He charged 400 pounds the psychiatrist
wore a hideous tie, not unnoticed.
Concocted a cocktail of drugs,
street value at least a grand and counting …
His pen in his left hand
the ultimate court of appeal.

This was a cruel fate for the most gregarious and kind-hearted of writers. According to the British-Canadian poet Naomi Foyle, whose career he helped to launch, “Peter was our Maestro. With formidable, rapscallion charm he organised readings for his troupes in Norfolk, Brighton and London, swooping into town with a Portuguese poet, a trumpeter, or a generous patron who would miraculously foot the dinner bill.”

His friendships were eclectic. Although an agnostic Anglican with RP vowels, he was never happier than when drinking with the very tribal Irish community in Reading, Berkshire, where he taught in three Catholic schools. A lifelong socialist, he relished the company of eccentric Tories.

Peter Francis Pegnall was born in west London on July 23 1949, the middle of three brothers with sharp wits and booming voices: one became a high-flying civil servant, the other an air commodore in the RAF. Peter attended Latymer Upper School, where he acted in plays alongside Alan Rickman but left before taking his A-levels.

Later he passed his exams at night school and worked as a lorry driver and ferryman before reading English at the University of Ulster. He also did postgraduate studies in Shakespeare at York University.

Wherever Pegnall went he set up flourishing poetry events. He founded Out of the West, an Irish-themed festival in Brighton, and A Casa dos Poetas, a poetry festival in Silves, Portugal, which has been running for more than 20 years. He could charm even pub landlords into providing sponsorship for poetry events – though perhaps they recognised a shrewd investment, given the thirstiness of Pegnall’s muse.

One fellow poet commented that seeing Pegnall chatting up or gently mocking a stranger on a train was like something out of Joe Orton. In his life as well as in his poems, bawdiness rubbed shoulders with contemplation.

On May 26 his body was found on a Norfolk beach. He had fallen from a coastal path that runs past Sheringham Golf Club. Although he was depressed, it is entirely possible that this was an accident, given that one of his poems refers to his typically reckless habit of urinating from the top of a cliff.

Peter Pegnall is survived by a daughter from a short-lived marriage in the early 1970s, and by his 100-year-old mother.

​Peter Pegnall, born July 23 1949, died May 26 2026

[Source: Daily Telegraph]