Selected Poems

Garfitt Roger

Roger Garfitt has published sparingly but always to good effect. "Selected Poems" – which includes important prose as well – reveals the individual character of each poem and sequence, "written only when the internal pressure demands and the slow pace of craft allows". Carol Ann Duffy observed in the "Guardian" that "he clearly believes, quite rightly, in the Muse and his approach has the patience of a journey-man's to his craft".

Hard-won, but not austere, the poems are marked by tenderness and passion; quiet humour rather than irony runs through them. Sean O'Brien writes, "He is both a meticulous re-creator of, for example, the effects of light, and a sociable poet who sees place as expressive of its inhabitants... The minuteness of his attention is often rewarding... an intriguing counterpart to the more public work of Douglas Dunn and Tony Harrison".

Extended extracts from the poet's journals evoke life in Bogota during the Drug War and provide a moving account of the poet's return to landscapes he shared with his late wife, the poet Frances Horovitz.

About the Author

Roger Gargitt was born in 1944 and has been a freelance writer ever since winning the Gregory Award in 1974. He was married to the late Frances Horovitz, whose "Collected Poems" he edited in 1985. From 1985 to 1992 he spent much of his time in Colombia, where he reported for Granta and the London Review of Books. He is now remarried and living in Shropshire. His autobiography, "The Horseman's Word" (Cape), was published in April 2011. Carcanet have published three previous collections of his poetry, most recently "Given Ground" (Poetry Book Society Recommendation, 1989).

Reviews

"After several readings, over quite a long time, I find it all coming together in a very moving way – like the fragments of an archaeological dig gradually suggesting a whole pattern of inheritance and allegiance" – Ted Hughes

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