The former Oxford professor of poetry, Sir Geoffrey Hill, has died at the age of 84. He was best known for his 1971 collection of prose poems, Mercian Hymns, and was described by the poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy, as “in poetry, a saint and a warrior who never gave an inch in his crusade to reach poetic truth”.

Hill was professor of poetry at Oxford from 2010-15, and was knighted in 2012. He was born in Bromsgrove, Worcestershire, and after gaining a first at Oxford embarked upon an academic career. Mercian Hymns juxtaposes the history of Offa, eighth-century ruler of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Mercia, with Hill’s own childhood in the West Midlands.

Background: Oxford professor Hill takes Carol Ann Duffy to task