Verse and C.

Bernard Oliver

"Verse &c" collects a substantial body of Oliver Bernard's poetry written since the early 1980s and the publication of "Poems" (1983). His versions of French poets – Rimbaud, Apollinaire – are widely known and praised, but his original work has recently appeared only in small editions. "Verse &c" offers lyricism, narratives, political protest, poems about people, poems of place, an anonymous Middle English poem "Quia Amore Langueo" and much else. Bernard's variety, wit and clarity of imagination will surprise and delight.

About the Author

Oliver Bernard, born in 1925, worked as an advisory teacher of drama, and was a director of the Speak a Poem Competition since its inception. He was a fine reader and in 2012 produced a second CD of his readings, "Rimbaud, Whitman Etc". This also included his own sequence "Moons and Tides" and his stage-performance version of "A Season in Hell". Oliver Bernard lived in Norfolk for over forty years. A volume of autobiography, "Getting Over It", was published by Peter Owen in 1992. Anvil published his translations of Apollinaire and Rimbaud (both of which started life as Penguins) and his collection of poems "Verse etc". He died aged 87 on 1 June 2013.

Back to the list of books