Eric Winter

Francis Askew School (which Eric attended when it was a secondary school), North Road, HU4 6LQ

Eric Winter was born in Hull in 1923, and brought up on Gipsyville Estate, attending Francis Askew School. He was an apprentice at Wm Broady and Sons in English Street, before gaining a degree at the London School of Economics. He served as a Navy gunner on minesweepers in the Second World War, and after travelling the world, settled in Montreal in Canada, where he taught at McGill University. He has had eight books of poetry published, his work appearing in international journals such as the “Literary Review”.

In  1990, Eric retired to the town of Cobourg on the shores of Lake Ontario and in 1998, he was appointed the town’s Poet Laureate, as part of the town’s bicentennial celebrations. He resigned in 2009 and is now the town’s Poet Laureate Emeritus.