Jeremy Halvard Prynne, known as JH Prynne, a maverick figure in British poetry, died on 22 April at the age of 89.

“Jeremy was an extraordinary and original human, which is no surprise because he was an extraordinary and original poet,” said Peter Gizzi, the American poet who introduced a reissue of Prynne’s 1969 collection The White Stones. “The word ‘genius’ gets tossed around, but if anyone was, he certainly was.”

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. He ultimately became director of studies in English, and for 37 years was also the college librarian.

Prynne’s first collection, Force of Circumstance and Other Poems, was published in 1962. A second, Kitchen Poems, appeared in 1968. Influenced by the likes of Charles Olson, Prynne – in both his teaching and his poems – bridged American postmodern and British poetry circles, and acted as a liberating force on the latter. He was prolific, publishing dozens of collections across the decades, almost exclusively with small presses, and emerged as a cult figure despite his aversion to publicity, interviews, poetry readings and having his photograph taken.

His work has been collected in two volumes titled Poems, the second of which was published in 2024. “While one might have expected an update of Prynne’s already monumental Poems, the arrival of more than 700 pages of new work is a remarkable turn of events,” wrote David Wheatley in a review. “Here is a book to keep us busy for a very long time.”

A common observation, made by fans and critics alike, was that Prynne’s poetry was hard to parse. “Whether we ‘understood’ Prynne’s poetry or not, we were ardent admirers already,” wrote the British novelist Geoff Nicholson in 2011. “The obscurity was part of the appeal.”

The journalist John Simpson, who worked with Prynne in the 1960s on Granta magazine, “couldn’t understand” Prynne’s poetry, “and still can’t, but he was a charming, witty, elegant figure”, he wrote on X, following news of the poet’s death.

Beyond Cambridge, Prynne also taught and lectured at Surrey, Sussex and at Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou, China. Along with his poetry, he published lectures and criticism on subjects ranging from Willem de Kooning to Shakespeare.

Prynne’s “generosity is legion; his teaching is the stuff of legend,” added Gizzi, whose recent collection, Fierce Elegy, won the TS Eliot prize. “For all his astounding brilliance he was down to earth and deeply kind. I cherish every moment I was fortunate enough to be in his company. He was and will remain a bright element. His passing is an enormous and incalculable loss to the world of UK letters.”