He was general editor of its flagship anthology The New British Poetry and commissioned a number of other titles, including selected poems of John Ashbery, Lee Harwood and Tom Raworth.
The territory of The Cresta Run is short on dropouts and introverts; it's more a world of sleazy service stations, hot-dog vans and skinheads along the Hog's Back, dangerous sailors hot from the Falklands, people you watch your words with."
Writing of Cyclomotors, John Berger said: "It's a wonderful book - marvellously constructed and of a fidelity to experience such as you only come across with a true storyteller - as distinct from word-spinner."
Will Self wrote: "I don't think I've read anything for quite a while - perhaps not since Norman Lewis's memoir Jackdaw Cake - which conjures up quite so effectively this peculiar inter-zone between the behemoth of the city and the hinterland of the country.
His essays and reviews, mainly on poetry and poets, including Allen Ginsberg, Ed Dorn, Bill Griffiths, Tom Raworth, Denise Riley and Lee Harwood, have appeared in a number of journals.