Carcanet Press Logo
Quote of the Day
Carcanet Press is our most courageous publisher. When you look at what they have brought out since their beginnings, it makes so many other houses seem timid or merely predictable.
Charles Tomlinson
Order by 16th December to receive books in time for Christmas. Please bear in mind that all orders may be subject to postal delays that are beyond our control.

Collected Poems

Anthony Burgess

Edited by Jonathan Mann

Cover of Collected Poems by Anthony Burgess
10% off eBook (EPUB)
10% off Paperback
Categories: 20th Century, Bestsellers, British
Imprint: Carcanet Classics
Publisher: Carcanet Press
Available as:
Paperback (512 pages)
(Pub. Dec 2020)
9781800170124
£25.00 £22.50
eBook (EPUB) Needs ADE!
(Pub. Dec 2020)
9781800170131
£20.00 £18.00
Digital access available through Exact Editions
To use the EPUB version, you will need to have Adobe Digital Editions (ADE) installed on your device. You can find out more at https://www.adobe.com/uk/solutions/ebook/digital-editions.html. Please do not purchase this version if you do not have and are not prepared to install, Adobe Digital Editions.
  • Description
  • Author
  • Reviews
  • John Anthony Burgess Wilson (1917–93) was an industrious writer. He published over fifty books, thousands of essays and numerous drafts and fragments survive. He predicted many of the struggles and challenges of his own and the following century. His most famous book is A Clockwork Orange (1962), later adapted into a controversial film by Stanley Kubrick. The linguistic innovations of that novel, the strict formal devices used to contain them, and its range of themes are all to be found too in Burgess’s poetry, an area of his work where he was at once most free and most experimental. It is his least exposed and most complex and eloquent area of achievement, now revealed at last in all its richness. His flair for words, formal discipline, experimentalism, and fondness for variousness mark every page.
    Anthony Burgess
    Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) was a novelist, poet, playwright, composer, linguist, translator and critic. Best known for his novel A Clockwork Orange, he wrote more than sixty books of fiction, non-fiction and autobiography, as well as classical music, plays, film scripts, essays and articles. Burgess was born in Manchester, England and ... read more
    Jonathan Mann
    Jonathan Mann is editor of the Collected Poems of Anthony Burgess (Carcanet, 2020). He is a teacher, editor, researcher, poet and musician. Jonathan’s research on Burgess has been published in the following books: Anthony Burgess and France (2017); Marlowe, Shakespeare, Burgess. Anthony Burgess and his Elizabethan Affiliations (2012), and; Anthony Burgess: ... read more
    'This will doubtless be the definitive volume of Burgess's poetry for some time'

    Rob Spence, Shiny New Books

    'In scale and personality there is plenty of Burgess here: the philosophical musing, the encyclopedic obscurity, the wilful and occasionally jagged use of language... The reader will gain no particularly new insight into the feelings of the writer, but they will find the ideas which drove much of his fiction distilled, distorted and put to play... his Collected Poems demonstrate to the reader that poetry, with its linguistic freedom and its inherent allusiveness, was always at the heart of his output'

    Simon Rennie, Times Literary Supplement

    Praise for Anthony Burgess 'This is a superb brick of a book, from the cover photo to the index'

    Dominic Green, The Washington Free Beacon

      'This edition is exemplary, offering not only footnotes, but also miniature essays providing context for pieces most of which evaded capture in Burgess's own collection of his journalism.'

    Paul Griffiths, Times Literary Supplement

    'This book is often Burgess at his racily journalistic best: testy, peppery, pugnacious, swingeingly opinionated. He never minces his words, he is never a half-hearted fence sitter... Needless to say, Burgess at his best is wonderfully entertaining.'

    Michael Glover, The Tablet

      'Whoever at Carcanet had the idea of collecting all of Burgess's writings about music - the editor Paul Phillips himself, I presume - deserves a medal... I don't think I can conceive of a more enjoyable book being published this year, and it's only February.'

    Nicholas Lezard, The Spectator

     '€˜Reading Burgess is pleasant, suggestive and fun.'

    Rafa Latorre, El Mundo
    'Reading the entertaining collection is like popping into a pub to spend an hour with an erudite, garrulous polymath. When you resurface, blinking towards the light, you look at things a little differently.'

    N. J. McGarrigle, The Irish Times

     'Offering the wisdom, sense of discovery and thrill of a dozen fine novels, The Ink Trade can be read as a practical handbook of reading, writing and reviewing, as a compendium of shrewd maxims and epigrammatic wit, and as a defence of the business of writing alongside a gently ironic lament to a writer's plight in the age of mass media and marketing. For those with a deeper interest in Burgess's bountiful output, it is also a vital source for his theories of literature and language, and how these animate his work.'

    James Hopkin, NewStatesman

    'One of the things that The Ink Trade shows is that Burgess, whose main fault as a reviewer was excessive compassion for his fellow authors, can still serve as a model for beginners and old hacks alike.'

    Kevin Jackson, Literary Review

       'A commitment to the value of writing and literature comes across with vigour and rigour in "The Ink Trade".'

    Sean Sheehan, The Prisma

      'The writings cover a range of subjects, including Metropolis, Fritz Lang's classic 1927 film, and fellow writers Ernest Hemingway and JB Priestley. They also include an unpublished 1991 lecture on censorship.... The essays span Burgess's journalistic career, including the Yorkshire Post, from which he was sacked after reviewing one of his own books - Inside Mister Enderby... The review, dated 1963, is included in The Ink Trade.'
    Dalya Alberge, The Guardian
     'Carr has achieved a heroic feat in the editing of this book. From the vast mountain of Burgess' non-fiction writing he has curated a selection that is intensely readable, pleasantly eclectic, and balances the published and the unpublished in such a way that those who have read all of Burgess' previous collections will enjoy this book as much as the newcomer.'
    Joe Darlington, The Manchester Review of Books
     'Language is definitely of top concern in these articles. He believed that language and wordplay should be of top concern to anyone... Burgess tried to adopt the role of valiant, though uncompromising, protector and defender of great literature.'
    Blair James, The Manchester Review of Books
    A 'Book to Look Out For in 2018' in Herald Scotland
Share this...
The Carcanet Blog One Little Room: Peter McDonald read more Collected Poems: Mimi Khalvati read more Invisible Dog: Fabio Morbito, translated by Richard Gwyn read more Dante's Purgatorio: Philip Terry read more Billy 'Nibs' Buckshot: John Gallas read more Emotional Support Horse: Claudine Toutoungi read more
Find your local bookshop logo
Arts Council Logo
We thank the Arts Council England for their support and assistance in this interactive Project.
This website ©2000-2024 Carcanet Press Ltd