Peter Levi (Peter Chad Tigar Levi) Biography

British poet, born in Ruislip, London, educated at Campion Hall, Oxford. He was ordained as a Roman Catholic priest in 1964 and lectured at Campion Hall from 1965 to 1977 when he resigned from the priesthood and became a fellow of St Catherine's College, Oxford. His collections of poetry include The Gravel Ponds (1960), Death Is a Pulpit (1971), Collected Poems 1955–1975 (1976), Private Ground (1981), The Echoing Green (1983), Shadow and Bone (1989), and The Rags of Time (1994). Much of Levi's poetry is characterized by his highly developed descriptive powers which provide a firm basis in vivid imagery, often drawn from landscape and natural phenomena, for his wide-ranging meditations on religious, philosophical, and social themes. His other publications include the autobiographical The Flutes of Autumn (1983) and the travel writings of The Light Garden of the Angel King (1972), recording his experiences of Afghanistan, and The Hill of Kronos (1981), an account of Greece. As a biographer his works include the highly regarded Boris Pasternak (1990), as well as Tennyson (1993) and Edward Lear (1995). He was Oxford Professor of Poetry from 1984 to 1989, and his lectures appeared in The Art of Poetry (1991).