Peter Redgrove was born in a middle class family in Kingston. As a child he got a microscope as a present and because of this he got a scholarship to Cambridge for science. Although he was deeply disturbed and was found to suffer from schizophrenia. He attempted to have Deep Insulin Coma Therapy, a shock treatment for the disease, he had around sixty treatments but it was unsuccessful and gave him visions and he also lost interest in science, so he turned to poetry instead. After working on poetry for about a year he started being published by newspapers. At the age of 22 he married Barbara and had four children with her. Normally he drank heavily and once had an affair with one of his colleague’s wife. Eventually he started seeing another girl while he was still married to Barbara but she soon left him after he hit her and gave her a black eye but it wasn’t the first time, it would often happen when he was drunk. Even after all the problems he had in one year he had drafted 441 poems, some would say that it was the best work he ever did. One of the 441 poems was “On the Patio” In 1970 he married again to a girl named Penelope Shuttle who was also a poet.
Redgrove was awarded the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry in 1996. When he died in 2003 his wife and his daughter went to Maenporth Beach to spread his ashes in the ocean. “Maenproth Beach” was one of his most famous poems.
Redgrove being a drunk has a huge impact on this poem and it is why this poem was written. This poem is all about a person being drunk and depressed which is what Redgrove would have been at the time he wrote this. When relating this to today’s world I feel like a lot of people are depressed so they go out to drink and get drunk because they will make them feel better but in the long run it will only continue to get worse. It will become an ongoing cycle.
“On the Patio” is a free verse poem that doesn’t have a recognizable rhyme scheme. The poem is told in