I own two books by Philip Gross – The Water Table (winner of the T.S. Eliot Prize in 2009), and Love Songs of Carbon (from 2015), both published by Bloodeaxe Books. I’m not quite sure why I only have two of his collections. In my opinion he is one of our best contemporary poets. I grew up in Somerset, so a lot of his location – based writing has deep resonance for me (Gross was…
My youngest child was 18 at the end of last week. Today is Father’s Day. Both events have prompted me to revisit this collection of poems for families, edited by Carol Ann Duffy, which I was given as a present earlier this year. As with all good anthologies it includes a wide range of poems from across the centuries, that are as relevant now as they were when they were written – Here’s one from…
In addition to books on my poetry bookshelf, I also have a lot of pamphlets, including this one by Cliff Forshaw, published by Happenstance Press in 2011. Pamphlets are a great way for poets who haven’t had a collection in print to pull together an initial selection of work, or for other writers to create a smaller thematic collection of poems. Tiger falls into the latter category. It is 22 pages long, and themed around…
Repeat that, repeat Repeat that, repeat,Cuckoo, bird, and open ear wells, heart-springs, delightfully sweet,With a ballad, with a ballad, a rebound Off trundled timber and scoops of the hillside ground, hollow hollow hollow ground:The whole landscape flushes on a sudden at a sound. Gerard Manley Hopkins I heard a cuckoo yesterday. I can’t remember how long ago it was that I last heard one. It prompted me to revisit this brilliant collection of bird poems.…
John Burnside, of whom I have not written yet, is one of my favourite poets, which is one of the reasons I got this book. It’s one of a series of poet – to – poet series Faber collections, where a well known contemporary poets writes about, and chooses a small selection of a another poet’s work. Like most, if not all, of the other books in this series it is now out of print…
I own two of Moniza Alvi’s seven collections, Europa and At the Time of Partition. Many of the poems in Europa, (published in 2008), relate to ancient and modern traumas, including enforced exile, alienation, rape and honour killing. It’s centre-piece is a re-imagining of the story of the rape of Europa by Jupiter as a bull, whereas At The Time of Partition (2013) is a book length poem set at the time of partition between…
1989. The year the wall came down. Tiananmen Square. Exxon Valdez. A year bookended by George HW Bush becoming president and Ceausescu being deposed. I remember watching the latter in my grandmother’s house in Portchester Road, as we went there most Christmases. Such. A. Long. Time. Ago. So much has changed. Yet so much hasn’t. Today’s book from my bookshelf is a case in point. Published in 1989, Peter Reading’s Perduta Gente, with its’ central…
The Australian poet, John Kinsella, has written over thirty books. I only have Armour, which was published in the UK by Picador on 2011. My copy arrived as part of the Poetry Book Society membership I had at the time. The back blurb states that Armour is a beautifully various work, one of sharp ecological and social critique – but also one of meticulous invocation and quiet astonishment, whose atmosphere will haunt the reader long…
Anyone reading these poetry bookshelf posts will have seen that I haven’t, as yet, written much about any of the canonical poets, those who everyone says are the best, the most important, those you must read to get a proper understanding of poetry. The truth is I’m a little intimidated about doing so. I know that it will expose my lack of reading, my lack of education (I only took English to O Level at…
I was given this book as a Christmas present a couple of years go. It’s a relatively small (144 page) collection of poems in five sections – moving from what the f**ck through to life is still f**king beautiful. Subtle it is not. Many of the poems are obvious selections – and have appeared in plenty of other anthologies over the years – the book starts with Larkin’s this be the verse and follows with…