INTERVIEW By the Dart INTERVIEW
KEVIN PYNE
By Phil Scoble POET & BOATMAN
evin Pyne – poet, boatman and community activist - is making wooden pins in his garage as we catch up and chat about his life. It’s a perfect illustration of the work ethic that has run throughout his life. “I’m not doing too bad,” he says, “I’m bound to be: I’ve got good people around me in my life.” Born in 1950 in Dartmouth, Kevin attended Catholic primary school and then Cuthbert Mayne in Torquay. He then, in his own words, “mucked around on the river” in various jobs. He worked on the riverboats, the ferries and a number of other roles, all based on or around his beloved river Dart.
K
“Then I fell in love with a pretty redhead and decided I needed a proper job, so I joined the team on the Lower Ferry,” he smiles. “I worked on it for 25 years.” Kevin’s marriage to Lyzie, the subject of many of his poems, produced two children – Ross and Robyn, both of whom have continued the family connection to water: Ross is a shipping agent and Robyn (now Dr Robyn) lectures at Plymouth University in International Shipping Logistics. But after more than two decades, Kevin soon found himself forced to change careers after an accident. “I was crushed between a car and
the ferry at work,” he said. “Surgeons had to completely rebuild my leg. I wear a leg brace to this day. I left the ferry and started working on a water taxi. I was rubbish! The main problem I hadn’t thought of was that with my
brace and limp it would be difficult to get around on a small boat full of people and bags!” Then tragedy struck – Lyzie became gravely ill in 1998. She died from cancer in 1999, after 14 months of illness.
Kevin had always loved poetry – anyone who has heard him quoting Kipling or Causley will know he has an abiding love for it. He had also written for years, quietly encouraged by his loving wife.
Throughout Kevin’s
poetry is an unshakeable love of the river Dart and the town of Dartmouth
He wrote a poem for Lyzie when she died and it led, almost by accident, to his current career as a writer.
“People thought it was a good poem, and a couple of people said they didn’t believe I’d written it,” he tells me. “I suddenly wanted to prove I did, by writing more. “I’ve always written poetry but I’m not a natural poet,” Kevin says. “I’m dyslexic and can’t spell at all! I never lost my love of writing and poetry, even though at school no one had any idea about dyslexia and just told me I was thick.”
Then, in 2002, another tragedy struck.
Kevin went in to hospital for a colonoscopy to investigate a tumor and contracted the flesh-eating bug Necrotizing fasciitis. The tumor turned out to be benign, but the flesh eating disease nearly killed the hardy ferryman.
“I was in hospital for six months, and had to have major reconstructive surgery. Half of my stomach is missing and I have to use a colostomy bag. I nearly died a number of times. I came out of it disabled and unable to do as much as I used to, but it’s been 12 years since it happened and I keep reminding myself I wasn’t expected to make it this far.”
His near death experiences all
served to inspire Kevin to write even more. His poems came to the attention of Dartmouth Publisher Richard Webb, and Kevin’s first collection Further Up the River and fifty other poems was published in October 2004. It featured a foreword by Alice Oswald, who won the TS Elliot Award for her poem ‘Dart’ – in which the ‘ferryman’ character is based on Kevin! It is now up to its fifth printing. Its sequel First Across the Line was released in October 2005. Since then Kevin has been included in anthologies with Nelson Mandela and been featured in the National Service for Remembrance. He received a letter of thanks from the Queen for his poem ‘”In the Park” that was used for Remembrance: “The postie knocked on the door and said ‘You’ve got a really posh letter.’ I said I must be getting sued by
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