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Peter Carpenter taught English in secondary schools from 1980 until 2021, working in various roles including Head of Department and Director of Teaching and Learning. He was made a Visiting Fellow at the University of Warwick in 2000 and was Creative Writing Fellow at the University of Reading during 2007-08. He is now a freelance writer, tutor and editor.

He has co-directed Worple Press (www.worplepress.co.uk), a thriving independent micro-press, specialising in arts and poetry titles since 1997 and has edited and published over fifty books including work by many major writers including Iain Sinclair, Elizabeth Cook and Clive Wilmer.

He has worked in many school writing projects including ‘Write Over London’ at Kenwood House in  June 2011, Canning School, Eastbourne College, Dulwich College, Wellington College, Eton College and Radley College (as writer in residence) and the Marsh Academy, for example. He has run writing workshops at many universities, including Bolton, Exeter, Reading, Warwick and colleges at Oxford (Magdalen) and Cambridge (Sidney Sussex and Pembroke).

He wrote the chapter on creative writing, ‘Singing Schools and Beyond’ for the O.U.P.‘Handbook of Contemporary British and Irish Poetry’ (2013) and has written five articles on creative writing aimed at teachers for The Use of English. Former students include Costa prize-winning poet, Jonathan Edwards, poet and publisher Jane Commane, and Tom Chaplin, lead singer of Keane.

Poems have appeared in many literary journals and magazines including the TLS, Poetry Review, Poetry Ireland, Agenda, Stand, The Rialto, the Independent and The Independent on Sunday.  Some poems in ‘Just Like That’ (Smith|Doorstop, 2012) previously appeared in the following collections: ‘No Age’ (Shoestring, 2001), ‘The Black-Out Book’ (Arc 2002), ‘Catch’ (Shoestring, 2006), ‘After the Gold Rush’ (Nine Arches, 2009).  His most recent chapbooks are ‘Peace Camp’ (Maquette, 2015) and ‘Tintoretto’s Angels’ (Mariscat, 2022). A full collection is forthcoming from Smith |Doorstop in 2025. Collections have been widely and favourably reviewed in, for example, Poetry London, the TLS and PN Review.

He has read his poetry, mentored and run writing workshops for many organisations including the Arvon Foundation, Poetry Ireland, festivals, including Dartington, Wessex, Ledbury and  Aldeburgh, Survivors’ Poetry and the Royal Academy.  He has lectured on a variety of topics and authors including Geoffrey Hill (Warwick University and Cambridge University Summer School),  Thom Gunn (Agenda conference at UCL, 1999), Louis MacNeice (Aldeburgh, summer 2008) and Bernard Spencer (Reading University Conference:2009).

Peter has written articles on Shakespeare, Larkin and Modernism, Eliot and Donne, Gunn and Hill, and many other topics for journals including Agenda, Critical Survey and The English Review. Reviews of modern poetry have appeared in many journals including London Magazine, Metre, The Notre Dame Review and The North.

Poems have been much anthologised, for example in ‘A Body of Work’ (Bloomsbury, 2016), ‘Lifesaving Poems’ (Bloodaxe, 2015), ‘A Mutual Friend: Poems for Charles Dickens (Two Rivers Press/English Association, 2012), ‘ The Book of Hours’ (Duckworth, 2007), ‘ La Isla Tuerta, 49 poetas britanicos 1946-2006’ (Random House) and ‘The Gift: New Writing for the NHS’ (Stride 2003).

He has just finished ‘Bowieland’, due to be published by Monoray in March 2025. He lives with his wife in Oxfordshire.