Dr Lenrie Peters

Lenrie Peters was born Lenrie Leopold Wilfred Peters on September 1^st1932 in Bathurst and a descendant of a long line of West Indian immigrants. The Peters family was the most respected within Bathurst. When his father became the editor of The Gambia Echo in the late fifties and early sixties, Peters helped him in the editing of the paper. Mr Ingram Peters, his father, did without doubt inculcate in the young Peters some of his ideals among which is Pan-Africanism. This is a manifest in most of his poems.

Peters attended St. Mary’s Primary school and then the Methodist Boy’s High school[1] before going to Sierra Leone to do his two-year science programme at the Prince of Wales school. He then went to the United Kingdom at the Cambridge Technical College to study science and physics before moving to the Trinity College of Cambridge in 1953 to specialise in the natural sciences where he graduated with a Bachelor of Science honours in 1953.

Dr Lenrie Peters died on 27 May 2009 at the Hôpital Dantec, in Dakar after a brief illness.

POETRY

1- Collections of poems

·        1964, Poems, Ibadan: Mbari Publications.  44p. (33 poems)

·        1967, Satellites, London: African Writers Series N°37, Heinemann Educational Books. 103p. (55poems)

·        1971, Katchikali, London: African Writers Series N°103, Heinemann Educational Books. 69 p. (69 poems)

·        1981, Selected Poetry, London: African Writers Series N°238, Heinemann Educational Books. 143p.  (104 poems: 28 from Satellites, 28 from Katchikali and 48 new poems)

·        Je te parle ma sœur et autres Poèmes, Paris: Harmattan, (Under publication). 121p. (A translation in French of a selected poetry, J.D. Pénel ed.)

PROSE

1- Novel

·        1965, The Second Round, London; Nairobi: African Writers Series N°22, Heinemann Educational Books. 193p.

2- Short Stories

·        1972, ‘Recollection of a Beverage’, Ndanaan: The Gambia’s First Literary Magazine, Vol. 2., Issue, Banjul: Ndanaan.

·        1973, ‘The Ride’, Permanent Bureau of the Afro-Asian Writers, Afro-Asian Short Stories: An Anthology, Afro-Asian Series 2-3, Cairo: Permanent Bureau of the Afro-Asian Writers.  pp. 17-33.

·        1981, ‘Hunt for a Turtle’, Vincent, T., Black and African Writing: a FESTAC anthology, Lagos: The Centre for Black and African Arts and Civilisation National Theatre. 388p. pp. 82-85

·        1981, ‘The Local Party Secretary’, Vincent, T., Black and African Writing: a FESTAC anthology, Lagos: The Centre for Black and African Arts and Civilisation National Theatre. 388p. pp. 73-82.

[1] Methodist Boys High School was merged with the Methodist Girls High School to form what became, in 1959, the Gambia High School and later the Gambia Senior Secondary School as it is called today.

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