My friend Peter Howard, who has died of cancer aged 60, performed with the poets’ group the Joy of Six. His published works included Low Probability of Racoons, Game Theory, one full collection, Weighing the Air (2007), and poems in magazines, anthologies and online. He won prizes and was second in the Arvon in 2000. Involved in many digital initiatives, he ran workshops on internet literature, and designed his own poetry generating programme, written in Javascript.
When I first met Peter on a poetry course in Wales he had the aura of a successful professional in the real world. His career was high-end software programming, though we had to winkle that out of him – Peter was self-effacing to a degree and devoid of self-promotion.
But he could certainly hold his own on the page and the stage. His own intelligence shines through his work, which abounds with paradox and parody. His sestina on Schrödinger’s cat (“Pity the creature: it’s not alive nor is it dead”) is masterly, while Rubric mimics the formulaic instructions for the exam of life itself: “Continue until you are told to stop./ If you think you have finished before then,/ you are mistaken.”
Peter was born in Nottingham to Edgar and Enid Howard, who were teachers. Although already a lover of words and word play, on leaving Worcester Royal grammar school, where he was moved up a year on his first day, he studied physics and philosophy at Hertford College, Oxford. He worked on digital electronics and microprocessor design at the Royal Signals and Radar Establishment (RSRE) in Malvern during the holidays and, on graduating in 1978, spent four years teaching maths and science. He eventually became a respected telecommunications system design consultant. He wrote algorithms embedded in the Equivital Life Monitor that monitored Felix Baumgartner’s vital signs during his free-fall jump from space in 2012.
Peter joined the engineering firm Irwin-Desman in Croydon (1983-89), and from 1989 until his death, Philips Telecom and its offshoots in Cambridge. In Croydon he met Heather, an electronics graduate, while interviewing her for a job. They married in Cambridge in 1994.
Though humour is never far away, Peter’s poetry is permeated by a deep human engagement, displayed strongly in his dramatic monologues. These range from The Construction of the Tomahawk, a seaside ice-cream vendor’s murderous musings on his encroaching rival, to the poignant Shepherd: “Now the rest are gone, so when I die/ there’ll be no one to remember.” I was very happy to include this in the Faber Book of Christmas alongside TS Eliot’s Journey of the Magi.
He is survived by Heather and his sister, Cottia.
