By the time he joined the English department at Sheffield Hallam University in 1991, first as a lecturer and ultimately as Professor of Creative Writing, he had lived and worked in a variety of places including France, Ireland and Papua New Guinea, and done a bewildering variety of things, but the centre of his being was creative writing, particularly poetry and the short story, about which he was passionate.

While at Sheffield, he directed the biennial Hallam literature festival.

Australian writer Kathyrn Heyman was one of Archie's pupils and she recalled: "For me, E A Markham's absolute rigour and passion for language was incredibly liberating and exciting. I began the course determined to write a full-length poetry-play, but realised – with the help of Markham and the wonderful Lynne Alexander – that what I was imagining was a novel."

Archie was central to the development of MA Writing at Hallam, developing the MA Creative Writing course in 1994 with Jane Rogers and Professor Robert Miles. There were only three others of its kind in the country, and its subsequent success was a tribute to his energy and dedication.

Colleagues knew him to be unfailingly generous, courteous, and stylish.

Following his retirement in 2005, he was appointed emeritus professor and although he moved to Paris, he regularly visited Sheffield, always appearing when least expected to make the world seem a more colourful, more interesting place.

His writing was subtle, witty, intelligent, playful, and unorthodox. In 2002 his collection A Rough Climate was shortlisted for the Poetry Book Society's TS Eliot prize.

Earlier in his life, as his poetry became better known, he was invited to be writer in-residence at various institutions, including, from 1978, Hull College of Further Education.

E A Markham was the youngest in a family of four, his family having returned to Montserrat from the Dutch West Indies where his father had worked in an oil refinery, so that he could be born British.

In 1956, his parents' marriage having ended, his mother brought him to England, and from 1962 to 1965 he read philosophy and literature at what is now the University of Wales, Lampeter.

He taught, wrote, and worked in the theatre, and in 1983 he joined Voluntary Service Overseas and became media co-ordinator of Enga province in Papua New Guinea. Turning down the offer of a job with the World Bank, he returned to Britain in 1985.

He did not marry, and is survived by his brother, sister, and four nieces and nephews.