THE MAN who helped unknown poets achieve international recognition through his Calstock publishing house has been awarded the MBE.

Harry Chambers, who ran Peterloo Poets for more than 30 years, has received the honour for his services to poetry.

Described by poet Seamus Heaney as one of the great 'hearers and hearteners' of the work being done in British and Irish poetry, retired lecturer Mr Chambers launched the work of many poets, including U A Fanthorpe, who became a household name, John Whitworth and John Mole.

He gained a national and international reputation for his work but retired earlier this year at the age of 72 for health reasons and the increasing difficulty in getting Arts Council funding.

For the last 12 years Peterloo Poets was run from a converted chapel in Calstock which was restored with a lottery grant of more than £200,000.

Mr Chambers said he was honoured to receive the MBE: 'I have spent a lifetime publishing poetry and it is nice not just for me but for other people who labour in the vineyard of poetry that poetry has been recognised in this way.'

He said it came at a time when he had wound up his publishing empire and the old chapel had been sold by the trustees but it would remain a venue for the arts for the Calstock community, which was some sort of legacy for Peterloo.

Richard Hendin, who worked closely with Peterloo Poets said: 'The source of Harry Chambers' success, and it's no mean success to have run an independent poetry press for thirty-seven years, was his unerring ear for good poetry, and his confidence, based on his belief that poetry appeals principally to the emotions, in his own judgement.  

'It takes courage too, not to use your brain to make yourself well off, but to set out on a life in which financial survival is likely to be precarious.  

'In doing so Harry, with his late wife Lyn's support, brought to print poets who might otherwise have had no publisher, poets who might have been discouraged at a crucial juncture by an impersonal rejection slip. 

'Some of these poets, in particular U A Fanthorpe, he brought to prominence, and in doing so earns himself a place in the history of poetry publishing in the UK.'

U A Fanthorpe's partner Rosie Bailey said: 'Harry founded a press of immense distinction – in both literary and visual terms — and courageously launched the poetry of so many names we now take for granted as important in the world of poetry: the great original Elma Mitchell — at a time when few women poets were taken seriously—, Anna Adams, Diana Hendry, M R Peacocke, Ann Drysdale, not to mention men such as William Scammell, John Whitworth and John Mole. His collections set a standard of elegance unrivalled by many of the more established presses of the day.

'Peterloo will go down as one of the great small presses of the late twentieth century; its poets will remember Peterloo with great gratitude, but also with enormous affection for the publisher.'