Ralph Pite is a Professor of English Literature at the University of Bristol, and has previously taught at Cambridge and Liverpool. His biography, Thomas Hardy: The Guarded Life was published in 2006 and hailed as a 'brilliant book' (New Statesman); he has also published books on Dante and the Romantic poets, on Hardy and the regional novel, and on the poet W.S. Graham. Ralph has published poems (in both English and Italian) in a number of magazines and journals and in a book called Tricycle with Bennett Huffman and John Bleasdale. Paths and Ladders, published by The Brodie Press in 2003, is his first collection. He is currently working on some short stories.

Paths and Ladders
Ranging across work and family life, personal memory and regret, these poems by Ralph Pite, often experimental in form or tone, give the experience of being 'out in it', up against the city landscape.

Photo of Ralph Pite by Thomas Conolly

New poems
Non-Combatant Commandments
Sefton Park
In the Market
Home Late


Poems from Paths and Ladders
Past Caring
The Poster of Frank O’Hara in the Kitchen of Judith’s Flat


Links
Ralph Pite keeps a diary about his writing as part of the Liverpool University Centre for Poetry and Science (LUPAS).
You can visit their site here.

Ralph Pite teaches at the University of Bristol.
Find out more, and visit his homepage, here.

Find out more about Ralph's book,
Thomas Hardy: The Guarded Life, here.


Praise for Paths and Ladders:
'Pite could take Cordelia, who couldn't flatter the truth, for a Muse. Often on the edge of understatement, his poems are allowed just the measure of eloquence they need to establish their forms: and he leaves it at that. There's space for the reader; who can always make contact with an authorial presence, unobtrusive and often almost transparent, but nonetheless answerable.'
- Roy Fisher

'Pite's new poems have a repertoire of exploratory rhythms that can discover their occasions in the interstices of the tiniest events - such as a wobbling kitchen table, or a car's cooling bonnet. Time and again, his sparsely energised lines will find informed meanings that invite and reward close, repeated savouring.'
- Peter Robinson

'Pite's poems have a devious clarity.'
- Adam Piette