"Shelley's conception of love lies at the heart of his radical views on social justice, political liberty, and poetry itself". In bringing together for the first time Shelley's almost unknown prose writings on love, Richard Holmes presents an intelle...

Devices and Desires is Dick Davis's selection from his three earlier books, together with twenty-three new poems. This collection by one of England's most original, yet traditional, poets demonstrates the range of themes which he commands, and the gi...

W. G. Shepherd's second book gathers his poems since "Sun, Oak, Almond, I" (1970). A strong sense of fantasy and humour plays its part in this collection, which ranges from the intriguing experiments of "The Antonine Poems" to the plain and moving na...

John Skelton (1464?-1529) is the first great modern English poet. Immensely proud of his poetic calling, he celebrates in his poems the language itself, in all its richness. He wrote in a vigorous vernacular, taking literary English out of the mediev...

A house that should have creaked but did not, the work of Benjamin Britten, an attempt at fostering: the wide range of Keith Bosley's new collection springs from a few central themes – the need for constant negotiation between people, between life an...

The title of the American poet John Matthias's second English volume suggests both continuity and change. The first two sections continue the idiom of "Turns" (1975) and include many poems on English themes. The two concluding sequences chart voyages...

Matthew Mead's third collection of verse follows "Identities" (1967) and "The Administration of Things" (1970). In his own words, his is "a quiet voice for quiet rooms" – but the voice is distinct and compels attention. As Richard Holmes wrote of his...

"Selected Poems" draws on all the books Elizabeth Jennings published before Growing-Points. It represents the poet's own distillation of the first two decades of her writing – the poems which established her as one of the most passionate and precise...