Professor Andrew Crozier, 1943-2008
Apart from certain departments of Fine Art, it is rare to find, in contemporary British universities, excellent practitioners of the art which they teach. Andrew Crozier was one: a very gifted and significant poet who was also an impressive teacher at Sussex until 2005, becoming a selfless administrator within the then School of English and American Studies, where he rose to become Dean in the late 1990s.
Andrew was educated at Cambridge, a university which formed the fertile context for his poetry. By 1966 Andrew was appointed to the University of Essex; soon after he moved to Keele University, eventually coming to Sussex in 1973.
He was a publisher and editor, as well as a teacher and administrator. The English Poetry Revival were prodigious self-publishers, establishing their own small presses - Andrew’s was called The Ferry Press – and little magazines and reviews.
Contacts through the 1970s and ‘80s with contemporary artists, such as Tom Phillips, fed his deeply felt sense of the inter-relatedness of the visual and pictorial and poetry and prose, which was always so manifest in his own poems.
At an early date in his career at Sussex he took over the key interdisciplinary course, ‘Art and Letters in Britain, 1900-30’, which had been initiated by Quentin Bell. I was fortunate enough to join him as co-teacher in the seminars for this course in 1975 and Andrew’s subtle observations opened the eyes of undergraduates and myself.
As Dean of the School of English and American Studies in the 1990s he was a formidable but generous presence, helping and enabling undergraduates and his own research students. He became Professor of English in 2004 and retired from Sussex in 2005, being immediately recognised as a Visiting Research Professor.
Andrew died on 3 April. A one-day event marking his life and work, at the School of Humanities, is being planned for this autumn.
Professor David Alan Mellor