Will Hill  (UK)

I first met Richard Berengarten (then Burns) during the preparations for the Cambridge Poetry Festival in 1975, my first year in Cambridge as an art student.We have therefore known one another for nearly 50 years, and the whole of my professional life.

His invitation to students to contribute a series of poster-poems for the poetry festival showed a characteristic generosity of spirit and a concern for creative interaction.I was just nineteen and starting to gather clues as to how a creative life might be conducted and on what terms it could be sustained. This project – and the conversations, readings, encounters and parties that followed – opened up a world largely unknown to me.

Since then we have collaborated across a rich variety of projects and outputs, from my cover designs for Learning to Talk and Tree, published in 1980, to the image-poems of Dyad this year. In between have been books, pamphlets, prints, journals, events, exhibitions and other outputs too numerous to mention. During this time his opinion, encouragement and feedback has been a point of reference for my creative life, one that I may have just occasionally, at times, been able to reciprocate. Richard’s part in these dialogues has been graced in equal measure by critical intelligence and empathy, tolerance and creative passion.

It is sometimes easier to measure someone’s published output than to fully acknowledge their impact ton others. I’ve always valued Richard’s gift as facilitator; as much ‘lightning-rod’ as ‘seismograph’; opening up unexplored potential around events and the interaction of individuals. The poetry festival was just one example of this gift in action.

I remember that he once described a collection of my work as ‘a celebration of possibilities’, one of many affirmations that continue to serve me very well. There are people who make our lives larger and richer by their presence, and I owe to Richard much of the sense of possibility I have been able to bring to my work throughout our long friendship.

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