Peter Abbs

Peter Francis Abbs (22 February 1942 – December 2020) was an English poet and academic, born in Cromer, Norfolk. He was the author of ten books of poetry and numerous works on the philosophy of education and creative writing. He was the father of writer Annabel Abbs.

Early life Second son of Eric Charles Abbs, a bus driver, and Mary (née Bullock), a shop assistant, Abbs was born at Cromer, and grew up on the North Norfolk coast. The bare landscape was to exert a significant influence on his later poetry, as was the walled garden at Upper Sheringham Hall, where his grandfather was head gardener. His mother was deeply committed to the Catholic faith and this influenced his boyhood desire to become a priest. After leaving St Joseph's School in Sheringham in 1954, Abbs travelled to Liverpool to join Saint Peter's College, a seminary run by the Mill Hill missionary fathers. However, he quickly became disillusioned and in 1956, with the active support of his father, he left to continue his education at Norwich Technical College. Here he completed his O- and A-levels and in 1961 began a joint degree in English and Philosophy at the University of Bristol, which he completed in 1963. and helped produce one of the first anthologies of eco-poetry, Earth Songs.

In 2002, having been made the first Professor of Arts Education and then Professor of Creative Writing, Abbs took up a new role within the Humanities department at Sussex, where he directed a D.Phil. programme in creative writing. During this period Abbs wrote his most passionate defence of what he saw as authentic education: Against the Flow. This sets out his critique of the encroaching managerialism in the organisation of schools and, drawing on both seminal principle and good practice, posited a bold alternative: education for wholeness of being and the creative life.

Drawing on his doctorate The Development of Autobiography in Western Culture from Augustine to Rousseau (1986), Abbs's ongoing project, The Story of the Self, is a critical history of Western notions of selfhood. The work focuses on key figures who have shaped the tradition of introspection and reflexivity. Related essays on Augustine, Dante, Petrarch, Montaigne, Rousseau, Nietzsche, Freud and Jung have already appeared in recent issues of The London Magazine.

Abbs retired in 2006 and became Emeritus Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Sussex.

In 1963, Abbs married Barbara Beazeley; they had a son, Theodore, and two daughters, Annabel and Miranda, before divorcing in 2002.