The poet JH Prynne, who became a cult figure despite an aversion to publicity, interviews, poetry readings and having his photograph taken, has died at the age of 89.

Born in Bromley, Kent, in June 1936, Prynne served two years in the British army before studying English at Cambridge, graduating in 1960. He pursued a fellowship at Harvard before returning to Cambridge, becoming a fellow at Gonville and Caius college, pictured. He became director of studies in English, and for 37 years was also the college librarian.

A controversial figure whose poetry first appeared in the 1960s, he gained a reputation among avant-garde poets but was less well regarded by the poetry ‘establishment’, which generally found his poetry to be almost wilfully obscure. That verdict softened with the publication of Poems (1982), which marked the beginning of a wider recognition.

A Poetry Foundation article on Prynne described his writing as “ undoubtedly, the most audacious of post-war English poetry”. 

The publisher Bloodaxe said that his “austere yet playful poetry challenges our sense of the world, not by any direct address to the reader but by showing everything in a different light, enacting slips and changes of meaning through shifting language”. Bloodaxe published further editions of Poems in 1999, 2005, and 2015. His Poems 2016-2024 was a separate, supplementary edition of his later work. He also wrote poetry in classical Chinese under the name Pu Ling-en.   

Prynne died at Addenbrookes hospital in Cambridge where he had been receiving palliative care after a recent illness.