Peter Reading(1946-2011) was a famous and prolific English poet. He was born in Liverpool. He studied and taught at Liverpool College of Art. His first volume of poetry collection is Water and Waste (1970). His other poetry collection includes Nothing for Anyone (1977), C (1984, a grim meditation on cancer), Ukulele Music (1985), a fantasia on Thatcherite Britain which many regard as his outstanding single volume, Going On (1985), Essential Reading (1986), Stet (1986), Final Demands (1988) Perduta Gente (1989), Last Poems (1994), Chinoiserie (1997), Work in Regress (1997), Apopthegmatic (1999), Ob (1999), Repetitious (1999), Marfan (2000), and Faunal (2002).
His Collected Poems 1997-2003 was published in 2003. Reading’s work displays a fertile inventiveness and aggression in typography, verse form, and subject matter. Characteristically, he contrasts a reporter’s unsparing evocation of the underside and underclass of contemporary Britain-pub life, domestic brutality, and street violence with a mocking command of classical metrics.
Also read; Charles Reade (1814-84); Biography and famous works