My friend John Hall, who has died aged 80, was a senior lecturer and later vice-principal at Dartington College of Arts in Devon, where in 1994 he helped to create one of the UK’s first degrees in performance writing.
He was also a published poet, with a collection of poems, Between the Cities, that appeared in 1968, followed regularly by others until 1981, all of them exhibiting a combination of sharp observation and rueful candour.
John was born in Broken Hill (now Kabwe) in Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia), to Rachel (nee Gartside-Tippinge), a translator, and Sir Douglas Hall, a British colonial administrator. His early upbringing was initially in a remote setting: the family’s nearest neighbours were 25 miles away and the closest cinema and doctor were 77 miles away.
John and his elder sisters, Ruth and Marion, were the only non-missionary children at Sakeji boarding school. At 13 he was sent to England, where he finished his secondary schooling at Dover college in Kent.
In 1965 he began an English degree at Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge, where his tutors were the poets JH Prynne and Andrew Crozier. John’s cadences were there from the start, and Between the Cities was published just as he graduated. Wry and measured, yet freewheeling and succinct, his words were always used sparingly, as in his poem from Days (1972), which ran: “It has rained a long time / it is March 9th / there is blossom everywhere / it is not that everything has moved.” Later, an archival prose work, Apricot Pages, and a restrospective, else / here, were published. Couldn’t You? and two volumes of essays on performance writing followed.
After teacher training at Southampton University, John met Angela Keys, a psychotherapist; they married in 1972 and had two sons, Thomas and Birdie.
He first worked as an English teacher at King Edward VI community college in Totnes, Devon, for five years (1971-76) before moving to Dartington College of Arts (now part of Falmouth University) as a lecturer. He became vice-principal in 1990. It was in that role that he led the group that planned the college’s performance writing degree, a course that I took. He taught conversationally, with a gentle, gracious manner that was laced with humour.
John stayed at Dartington College until 2010, when the college was moved to Falmouth, where he was appointed associate director of research and professor in performance writing before retiring in 2020.
He lived for 40 years in a house near Buckfastleigh, Devon, with a long garden that shaded the river. A revolving summerhouse captured his sense of fun and his eclectic range of interests. For many years he was visited by a mysterious peacock that flew regularly into his garden. He named him Percy and the two of them struck up a rapport.
John and Angela divorced in 2009 but renewed their partnership in later life. She survives him, as do their sons, grandsons, Joseph and Joshua, and his sister Marion.
