He had just used up almost all his courage to come through the door.
Gillian Frost on meeting Peter in 1982
Journey
A life of transformation
Peter Goode's biography can be read as a movement from imposed shame toward shared creative force.
Born in Huddersfield in 1934, Peter Goode lived for decades with severe unrecognised dyslexia, a phobia of the written word and major social obstacles. His entry into adult education and his relationship with Pecket Well College opened a new chapter where poetry and painting could fully emerge.
1934 - childhood
Huddersfield, imagining in order to survive
Peter grows up in difficult circumstances. Imagination quickly becomes a space of refuge and intensity. Unrecognised dyslexia and the prohibition of his left-handedness turn writing into a zone of fear rather than learning.
The written word became a phobia.
Book extract
Childhood - visual shocks
Van Gogh, the seagull, the horse on the blackboard
Seeing a Van Gogh print in a local chippy opens for him the possibility of creating worlds of his own. Soon after, a stranger praises a drawing of a seagull, and the destruction of a horse drawn on a classroom blackboard becomes another defining moment.
That s excellent!
Memory of a passerby looking over his shoulder
Adulthood
Work, injury and family life
After the army, an accident severs two fingers from his right hand. He relearns how to draw. He later works as a cable jointer for the Electricity Board and raises seven children largely on his own while hiding the fact that he cannot read.
People can take away your home but not your education.
A phrase remembered by his son
1982
Entering adult education
Meeting Gillian Frost marks a decisive shift. In Room 7 Peter begins learning to read by working from his own poetic language. Education ceases to be humiliation and becomes reconstruction and dignity.
A beginner reader is not a beginner thinker.
Educational principle quoted in Opening Time
Pecket Well years
Colleague, poet, artist
With a group of activists and adult learners, Peter helps create Pecket Well College. There he finds a place where learning, solidarity and creation can coexist. His poems, then his paintings, gain new visibility.
He was at university level in all but his inability to read.
Gillian Frost
1990s - 2000
Exhibitions, recognition and creative intensity
Peter exhibits through Hebden Bridge Arts Festival, the Hardcastle Crags Sculpture Trail, Todmorden Show and other regional contexts. His practice expands from painting to sculpture, ink postcards and poetic assemblages.
For Peter, his art and his poetry were one.
Josie Pollentine
2012 and after
End of life, traces and transmission
Peter dies in 2012, leaving a body of work partly dispersed, sometimes sold, sometimes lost, but still active in the memory of those who knew him. The book and now this site continue his desire to share vision and encourage other unconventional paths.
He would love his work to carry on inspiring others.
Josie Pollentine
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