The poetry books I ordered for my birthday came in today. I had a quick peek at them but I'm not allowed to read them until my birthday next week.
Four of the books are by Scots, three by English poets - two of which currently reside in Scotland - and one by an American poet.
Hmm...it appears that my current poetic tastes are (unintentionally) a little on the ethnocentric side!
Here's the books I ordered:
The Shadow of Sirius - W.S. Merwin
Wolf Tongue - Barry MacSweeney
Nigh-No-Place - Jen Hadfield
The Book of Blood - Vickie Feaver
Elegies - Douglas Dunn
Aphrodite's Anorak - Hugh McMillan
New Collected Poems - W.S. Graham
Public Dream - Frances Leviston
Can't wait to get stuck into them but firstly, over the next week, I intend to say a little about some excellent poetry books I've been reading recently.
4 comments:
A great list. I particularly covet the WS Graham. (No need to: I could just nip over to Amazon, of course!) I've not read any Barry McSweeney for years - a serious omission. When I was a teenager I got Our Mutual Scarlet Boulevard out of the library. I remember being blown away by it.
Great list Sorlil. I don't know the Merwin, but I have 'Migration', which was a 'New and Selected'.
hi dominic, yes I've been wanting the W.S. Graham for a while now, it's good chunky size collection.
I've only come across McSweeney recently, read a few poems on the web and they were right up my street.
hi colin, it was hard choosing which Merwin collection to go for as I don't have any of his works. The Shadow of Sirius is his latest collection, the critics are saying it's his best in the last decade.
Drop me an e-mail. I have something I want to forward to you that I think you might be interested in.
jmurdoch@ntlworld.com
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