John Rety

I am sorry to find fellow editor John Rety, of Hearing Eye, has died. John was born in Hungary in 1930, coming to this country in 1947. Though he came to the notion of anarchism when he was 13/14 ("very late") he became seriously involved in the 1960s, becoming a member of the Committe of 100, and an editor of Freedom. He was a bohemian figure, a former partner of the writer Laura del Rivo, and was the first person to publish Colin Wilson, though he moved away from Colin Wilson as Colin moved to the right politically.

Since the 80s John was one of the key people at Torriano Poets and at Hearing Eye. He had an ability to pull in important readers to this scruffy little venue, none of whom were paid, and who were happy to rub shoulders with "readers from the floor" with all that meant. His press published Dannie Abse and others, actually about 200 publications in total, keeping them all in print. One of his treasures was the posthumous Selected Poems of AC Jacobs.

To everyone's amazement, given his anarchist views, John pitched up as the poetry editor at the communist Morning Star two or three years back, running a popular weekly poetry column which was collected in his Well Versed anthology, now in its second printing. He was thrilled by this, as it ran counter to his usual despairing cry that nobody ever wants to buy poetry.


John Rety would never win any well-dressed man competition. He was never the easiest person to have in a meeting but he did good work at all the organisations he worked with. Our condolences to Susan and Emily.