Collected Poems

Collected Poems

by KenSmith (Author)

Synopsis

Ken Smith (1938-2003) was a major voice in world poetry, his work and example inspiring a whole generation of younger British poets. His politically edgy, cuttingly colloquial, muscular poetry poetry shifted territory with time, from rural Yorkshire, America and London to the war-ravaged Balkans and Eastern Europe (before and after Communism). His early books span a transition from a preoccupation with land and myth to his later engagement with urban Britain and the politics of radical disaffection. The pivotal work marking this shift was his long poem Fox Running (1980), brought to recent attention when an archive recording of him reading it was broadcast by BBC Radio 4's Poetry Please in 2016. His Collected Poems brings together poetry from four decades, including all the work from two earlier retrospectives, The Poet Reclining: Selected Poems 1962-1980 (1982) and Shed: Poems 1980-2001 (2002), together with the posthumously published You Again: last poems & other words (2004). The book is introduced with essays by Roger Garfitt and Jon Glover, and the appendices include selected prose and interviews. Publication coincides with his 80th birthday and with the 40th anniversary of the publication of Bloodaxe's first title, Ken Smith's Tristan Crazy (1978).

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More Information

Format: Paperback
Pages: 648
Publisher: Bloodaxe Books Ltd
Published: 25 Oct 2018

ISBN 10: 1780374321
ISBN 13: 9781780374321

Media Reviews
`Ken Smith was a great poet... His last retrospective collection, Shed, confirmed the immense power of his poetry.' - Jon Glover, Guardian; 'Smith's writing exists in permanent disagreement with English fashion. A huge cast of overheard characters, wanderers, losers and remembrancers passes through his writing, bound by a common sense of loss and endurance.' - Sean O'Brien, Sunday Times; `His poems are squeezed out from under the unrelenting pressures of history, politics and the natural elements... some of his poems read like translations from war-ravaged Eastern Europe.' - Charles Boyle, London Magazine
Author Bio
Ken Smith (1938-2003) was born in Rudston, East Yorkshire, the son of an itinerant farm labourer. He lived in Leeds, Exeter, London and the US, and was writer-in-residence at Wormwood Scrubs prison in 1985-87, which prompted a poetry collection, Wormwood (1987), and Inside Time (1989), his book about imprisonment, Wormwood Scrubs and the men he met there. He was working in Berlin when the Wall came down, writing a book about East and West Berlin: this turned into Berlin: Coming in from the Cold (1990).