My friend Gordon Hodgeon, who has died aged 75, was a poet, teacher, teacher-trainer and arts activist and a hugely influential figure in the worlds of education, publishing and poetry in the north-east for 40 years. Towards the end of his life, profoundly disabled, he produced some outstanding poetry while able to communicate with the world only by blinking.
He was born in Leigh in Lancashire, son of Fred Ward, a wages clerk, and his wife, Nancy. Gordon studied English at Durham University and taught English in a secondary school in Leeds before working as a schools adviser, first in Teesside, later for Cleveland county council.
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