Peter Whigham

Peter George Whigham (6 March 1925 – 6 August 1987) was an English poet and translator, widely known for his translation of the poems of Catullus published by Penguin Books in 1966. He helped popularize the writings of authors like Ezra Pound, George Santayana, and William Carlos Williams.

In 1965 Whigham moved to the United States after working as an actor, broadcaster, and scriptwriter for the British Broadcasting Corp. At the BBC, he coordinated the first features focusing on Pound, Santayana, and Williams. In 1968–69 he was a guest lecturer in poetry at the University of California, Santa Barbara, as were Basil Bunting, Fred Turner, and Kenneth Rexroth. His seminar classes were popular among undergraduates new to the experience of living, modern poetry. In the mid-1980s he taught a graduate poetry seminar in the Comparative Literature Department at the University of California, Berkeley.

Books Ezra Pound (1955) Clear Lake Comes From Enjoyment (1958) The Marriage Rite (1959) Poems of Catullus (1966) The Crystal Mountain (1970) The Poems of Meleager (1976) Things Common, Properly: Selected Poems 1942 - 1982, Black Swan Books (1984).