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Selected Poems

David Wright

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Imprint: Carcanet Poetry
Publisher: Carcanet Press
Available as:
Paperback (128 pages)
(Pub. Jul 1997)
9780856357534
Out of Stock
  • Description
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  • Reviews
  • The present volume provides the best introduction to the work of this intelligent and lucid poet, with a selection from previous collections and a handful of recent poems. It offers vivid impressions of South Africa, Westmorland, Cumberland and the Algarve, as well as recollections of the many poets and artists who have been his friends.
    Five South African Poems
    On Himself
    Canons Ashby
    On the Death of an Emperor Penguin in Regent's Park
    Moral Stories
    A Funeral Oration
    Monologue of a Deaf Man
    An Invocation to the Goddess
    Adam at Evening
    Rhapsody of a Middle-aged Man
    At a Café Table
    A Visit to the Protestant Cemetery
    By the Effigy of St Cecilia
    Campo Santo
    Kleomedes
    Plettenberg's Bay
    On the Margin
    A Cemetery in Dumfriesshire
    Chester Car Park
    The Lakes
    Grasmere Sonnets
    The Deviser
    Words
    Swift
    Rook
    E.P. as Westminster
    On a Friend Dying
    A Peripatetic Letter to Isabella Fey
    Bom Jesus
    Encounter
    Balloon The Musician
    Procession
    Cockermouth
    Five Songs
    Notes on a Visit
    Beeches
    Images for a Painter
    Prospects
    An Elegy


    Born in South Africa in 1920, David Wright came to England at the age of 14 to attend the Northampton School for the Deaf; he graduated from Oriel College, Oxford, in 1942. From 1959 to 1962 he edited, together with the painter Patrick Swift, the brilliant but short-lived magazine X . ... read more
    'It is this luxury of authenticity which David Wright's book offers, and the reader who once gives himself up to the deep, quiet pleasure which is to be got from his poems is likely to form an addiction.'
    C.H. Sisson, TLS
    'Wright is a master at finding the appropriate form for his subject-matter.'
    Wendy Cope, TES
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