Jon Stallworthy, the son and grandson of New Zealanders, rounded the Horn en route to his birth in London. He began writing poems at seven, during - and about - the Second World War. The conflict and his colonial inheritance gave him a sense of 'the round earth's imagined corners' and the presence of the past which informs such of his best-known work as 'No Ordinary Sunday', 'A Letter from Berlin' and 'The Almond Tree'.

His first book established him as a poet with 'a gift few poets possess, and which all poets wish for - the ability to strike out a memorable and epigrammatic line which is at once simple and deeply
disturbing' (Critical Quarterly). That has remained the hallmark of his subsequent books which continue to command a place in all the major anthologies. Now, to coincide with the publication of a memoir, Singing School (John Murray), Stallworthy has made a comprehensive selection of what Poetry Review described as
'snatches of radio traffic from this century's storms, true stories, and some of the storytelling
inspired'.