Julie Folley remembers:

Mr. Cole pretended to be a fierce Sargeant Major, but was actually soft-hearted to us young and innocent girls who had arrived straight from home...and was always saying to me...'It's alright , I'm not really cross ' !  Missing some home comforts, he would let me use the bath, which was in a tiny bathroom situated at the top of Kerris Vean. I would arrive on a Saturday morning and he would give me a special key, not for the door, but to turn the water on at the stopcock.

That bath was also used for life drawing. I remember sketching one of the life models who was lying full length in the bath (full of water), with Anselm Van Rood instructing us students who, armed with our sketch books, completely surrounded her. Whilst we were trying really hard ourselves, Anselm, who's painting technique was to stare intently at the subject matter-(in this case Joyce) before putting down a mark, didn't notice that the water was getting cold. I remember Joyce saying some time later when I met her in the street, that he seemed to be so intensely involved in his work that she hadn't dared move to let him know.

The pottery dept. was the place I went to on the first day of my Foundation year. After a little chat, Derek Wilshaw said that we were going down to the beach ! I thought ' This is very different from school '. Actually we were going to each find a pebble, which we would use as inspiration for making a pebble pot.
I think that it was the first time that I'd really looked at something in 'that way' that would have some kind of special meaning for me, and I still do it now. I did make a pebble pot, and then a kind of Neanderthal figurine I named Audrey. Whilst in the pottery dept, I was coerced into making something for a college 'mag '.
I decided that for my contribution, I'd make individual clay mummies that would ( wait for it ! )...each fit into peanut shells, so that each person who had a magazine,would also receive a unique piece of art. The terra-cotta figures were even fired in the kiln.

I remember the first week's lesson with Peter Redgrove, there were too many of us in his study so some of us had to sit on the floor, we looked up in anticipation. He said "What would you like me to talk about?", after a few moments we replied "Sex", then "Death", then '"Myths", as these were interesting subjects at that age (actually any age). For the next six weeks he began to formulate those three subjects into a fantastic tapestry that captivated us all, I think it was true to say that we were all converted from that day on.

Derek Toyne who was Librarian at Falmouth School of Art from 1966 remembers Peter at the event in 2012 to celebrate the publication of 'A Lucid Dreamer. The Life of Peter Redgrove', by Neil Roberts.

At the meeting were Penelope Shuttle, Neil Roberts, Emeritus Professor of English Literature at Sheffield University, novelist and poet D.M.Thomas, poet Caroline Carver, poet and University contemporary of Redgrove's Harry Guest, poet and University College Falmouth lecturer Rupert Loydell.

Part 1 of the event is here: http://vimeo.com/38095828

Part 2 of the event is here: http://vimeo.com/38097795

Below is a clip of Derek from the event.

Neil Roberts remembers:

I didn't get to know Peter Redgrove till many years after the time commemorated here, but I was first drawn to him by a poem that he wrote during those years, and that was inspired both by the environment of Falmouth and by a figure who briefly insinuated himself into the FSA scene, John Layard (to whom it is dedicated). The poem is 'The Idea of Entropy at Maenporth Beach', about a woman dressed in white, running along the beach after mud-bathing in the nearby boggy wood—

The mud spatters with rich seed and ranging pollens.
Black darts up the pleats, black pleats
Lance along the white ones, and she stops
Swaying, cut in half. Is it right, she sobs
As the fat, juicy, incredibly tart muck rises
Round her throat and dims the diamond there?

I loved the sensuality and humour of this poem, and sought out more of his work. Eventually I wrote about it. It was typical of him that he always responded very generously to people who showed an interest in his work, and he wrote me a long letter, starting a correspondence that lasted until his death in 2003. I first met him in 1985, shortly after his acrimonious resignation from FSA, when he came with Penelope Shuttle to give a reading in Sheffield. I took them for lunch to a nearby pub where the bar was supported by a pair of rather kitsch caryatids. We were debating whether they were real wood, and I went across to find out by feeling them. A phrase Peter liked to use of himself was 'Scientist of the Strange', meaning among other things someone who trusts to the non-visual senses, and he said to Penny, 'Don't you think Neil is a scientist of the strange, the way he felt the caryatids?' I came to realise that this was an example of his trickster-like habit of catching you slightly off-guard. In my case I think he liked to disrupt my academic persona.

Another time, I was visiting him in Falmouth for an interview. You can read the interview in a book of Peter's writings, The Colour of Radio, where you will get the impression that it was a very sober affair. Actually huge amounts of wine and beer were drunk during the day, which seemed to affect Peter not at all, but caused me to delete the last of the tapes because I was mortified by the sound of my voice. We went of course to a pub for lunch. I was sitting with my back to the window, he facing it, and he suddenly said, 'My God, look at that woman's tits!' Again, he was trying to get me off-guard. In this same conversation I commented that he looked rather like the notorious magician Aleister Crowley, and asked if he had ever met Crowley. 'No,' he replied, 'but my mother may have.' It wasn't until I was researching his biography, years later, that I found out he was seriously obsessed by the thought that he might be Crowley's illegitimate son, and would have like this to be true, since he had a poor relationship with his actual father.

But Peter wasn't just a trickster and fantasist. He was a deeply serious writer and thinker. One of the strongest memories I have of him is in his later years, when the formerly robust man had been undermined by diabetes and Parkinson's, standing outside his house in Falmouth, telling me how important his work, and his vision of life, were to him. He spoke with an intensity that I can only compare with Carl Jung's account of talking to a Native American elder about his worship of the sun: 'Although no one can help feeling the tremendous impress of the sun, it was a novel and deeply affecting experience for me to see these mature, dignified men in the grip of an overmastering emotion when they spoke of it.'

It was a great privilege for me to have known Peter, as it must have been for the generations of students he taught in Falmouth.

Neil Roberts is the author of A Lucid Dreamer: The Life of Peter Redgrove and editor of Collected Poems and The Colour of Radio: Essays and Interviews by Peter Redgrove.