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Some of my favourite poetry books are the big fat volumes of Collected or Selected poems - how wonderful to have all those poems by a single poet contained within one book. When I won £300 in a poetry competition in my early twenties I was so excited to have some money to spend on some of those huge expensive volumes. Back then I bought the Collected Emily Dickinson and the wonderful Complete Akhmatova along with some other books well outside my usual budget then including a large volume of modern Russian poetry.
My favourite recent collected or selected books have been Roethke, Selima Hill and Sujata Bhatt. Usually one of these volumes can be found in my handbag where ever I go (though Hill's selected is rather large for my bag!). Pascale Petit's new collection, Fauverie, is due out soon but I really can't wait for a collected Petit to come out which surely must be on the cards.
