Peter Whigham

Who was Peter Whigham?

Peter George Whigham was an English poet and translator, widely known for his translation of the poems of Catullus published by Penguin Books in 1966.

Whigham was born in Oxford, where he was largely self-educated. He worked as a gardener, a school teacher, an actor, a newspaper reporter, and a script writer.

In the 1950s, he contributed to The European, a magazine edited by Diana Mosley.

In the early 1960s he moved to Italy to devote himself entirely to writing.

In 1968–69 he was a guest lecturer in poetry at the University of California, Santa Barbara, as was Basil Bunting, Fred Turner, and Kenneth Rexroth. His seminar classes were popular among undergraduates new to the experience of living, modern poetry.