Renowned Carcanet poet John Heath-Stubbs died in a West London nursing home on Christmas night at the age of 88.
 
A prolific and eclectic poet, as well as an erudite critic, translator and anthologist, Heath-Stubbs was born in London in 1918 and educated at Queens College, Oxford, where he published his first poems with the help of fellow young poet Sidney Keyes, who died in action in North Africa during the Second World War. He later became an influential presence on the British poetry scene of the 1950s. During the 1950s and '60s he taught poetry at the Universities of Leeds and Michigan, and later at the College of St Mark and St John in London, where he became a celebrated literary personality due to his frequently dishevelled appearance and bohemian ways.
 
Heath-Stubbs published numerous collections of poems, including Swarming of the Bees, A Charm Against the Toothache, The Divided Ways and, in 2005, Pigs Might Fly. Carcanet published 12 of his books, including his Selected and Collected Poems. Heath-Stubbs was deeply influenced by classical myth and in 2000 wrote an English translation of the only literary work by a woman to survive from ancient Rome, Sulpicia. He suffered from poor eyesight from birth and lost his sight completely in 1978. This did not deter him from writing, however; his credo was always to counter 'despair with elegance, / Empitness with a grace'. He was appointed OBE in 1988 and won the prestigious Queens Gold Medal for Poetry in 1973.