Publication Date : 25 Oct 2018
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), and from from the posthumously published You Again: last poems & other words (2004), as well as additional poems from two early collections, The Pity (1967) and Work, distances / poems (1972). The book is introduced with essays by Roger Garfitt and Jon Glover. 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).
‘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
‘Ken Smith brought an original and memorable voice to poetry in Britain. He spent his writing life not so much swimming against the tide as ignoring the stream’s existence… He was one of those by whom the language lives.’ – Sean O’Brien, Independent
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