Patricia Beer

Who was Patricia Beer?

Patricia Beer was an English poet and critic.

She was born in Exmouth, Devon into a family of Plymouth Brethren. She moved away from her religious background as a young adult, becoming a teacher and academic. She began to write poetry after World War II, while living in Italy; she is most often classified as a 'New Romantic' poet comparable to John Heath-Stubbs. On her own account, however, there is a discontinuity in her work. Devon is a major presence.

She was married twice; first to the writer P.N. Furbank, and then to Damien Parsons, an architect, settling in Upottery, near Honiton, England. From the later 1960s she wrote full-time. She edited several significant anthologies, broadcast, and contributed to literary reviews.