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Conjurors

Poems

Julian Orde

Edited by James Keery

Cover of Conjurors by Julian Orde
10% off all versions
Categories: 20th Century, British, Women
Imprint: Carcanet Classics
Publisher: Carcanet Press
Available as:
Paperback (180 pages)
(Pub. Sep 2024)
9781800174559
£14.99 £13.49
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(Pub. Sep 2024)
9781800174566
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  • Description
  • Author
  • Awards
  • Reviews
  • In Conjurors, a major poet is revealed for the first time. Julian Orde (1917–74) published only in magazines during her lifetime. A friend of Stevie Smith and an intimate of Dylan Thomas and W.S. Graham, she was one of those 'peripheral figures' who turns out to be a centre in her own right. Her evolving worlds and changing landscapes as a writer come alive in these substantial, unexpected poems. Her lyrical surrealism is prophetic and retains its charge:
    The speckled water rippled into minnows,
    Of worms and turf smelt all the fish pale morning,
    Earth pushed up its smell of worms through grass and wet,
    Through sodden leaf, mushroom and winking frog.
    I, on the bank, lived quick as breathing frog,
    Its lungs and mine puffed out September's thin
    Morning, sallow and silver, fish-filled, the sky in a river.

    Wherever I go in the guilty years there still
    Goes my innocence with me [...]
    William Empson celebrated her. 'Wonder at nature, wonder at all experience, is her note, and she gets a great deal of variety into it; also she has a beautiful ear, and a supply of unforced humour.'

    The editor of PN Review said, 'It's hard to imagine the middle of the twentieth century now without Julian Orde.' Carcanet's recovery of her work – thanks to the patient archaeology of James Keery and V. Beatson – proves that the past, even the relatively recent past, is at least as rich in resource and surprise as the present.
    Julian Orde
    Julian Orde (1917-74) was a granddaughter of the 4th Duke of Wellington, raised in London and Paris, and presented at court as a debutante. She rebelled. She achieved distinction and professional success as a poet, a writer of short stories, an actor, a playwright, a screenwriter and a copywriter. She published ... read more
    James Keery
    James Keery lives in Culcheth with his wife Julie and teaches English in Wigan. He has published a collection of poems, That Stranger, The Blues, and edited Carcanet's Apocalypse, an anthology of mid-century visionary modernist poetry; also the Collected Poems of the Scottish poet Burns Singer.     ... read more
    Awards won by James Keery Short-listed, 2021 The Scottish Poetry Book of the Year (Apocalypse)
    Praise for James Keery
    'The book is a maze of the unexpected and the good, I hope it will be around for a long time.'

    Fred Beake, Acumen  

    'The sheer range of voices on display in Apocalypse: An Anthology is as thrilling as the poems are at times challenging, even difficult'

    Chris Moss, The Poetry Review 

    'Apocalypse is a litany of the lost, and offers up various and distinct categories of the poetic undead... [it] redefines modern British poetry with exemplary panache.'

     David Wheatley, The Guardian

    'The wealth of talent on offer is simply extraordinary... What Keery does show, regardless of labels, is a wealth of almost unknown work - work of such high standard that history books of poetry with their neat categories and vast omissions might need extra chapters that tease out the sheer quantity of good poems, rather than assuming that what has fallen through the cracks of time is best left there.'

    David Hackbridge Johnson

    'Apocalypse is passionate. It represents a raised pitch and extended conceptual scope, a turn towards biblical and epic tone if only momentarily, and an amplification of address by which words may transcend even an excessive figurative function which remains controlled, such as Surrealism, and appear to violate the dialect itself, momentarily or consistently. There is also a characteristic rhythmic drive, frequently empowering a first-person declaration ... Keery's anthology proposes a spread of ability beyond the relevance of experts or judges, poems which are sent out into the world to fend for themselves, enlivened by attachment to a strong history.This anthology must have taken an immense amount of dedicated work; in fact I can't imagine how he managed to uncover so many worthwhile poems hidden away in forgotten poetry magazines and old small-press books. The history of British poetry in the twentieth century will never be the same again.'

    Peter Riley, Fortnightly Review

    'It's incredible. Right into my favourite anthologies of all time.'

    Max Porter

    'Can I find fault with this anthology? I tried, but I was overwhelmed - it gives everything you could possibly ask for and travels to places which this reviewer did not know existed... Keery has found poets we didn't even know about... This recovery of the real story of the Forties is a unique achievement, but is also a rehearsal for the even larger project of recovering the whole history of 'alternative' poetry since 1937, and for the first time drawing a map of modern British poetry which is based on information rather than a wish to control the market'

    Andrew Duncan, Tears in the Fence

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The Carcanet Blog PN Review 279: Elegies by Lorna Goodison read more Conjurors: Julian Orde read more Citizen Poet: Eavan Boland read more Library Lives: Stella Halkyard read more Tablets: Dunya Mikhail read more PN Review 278: Set 5: Mondo de Sunbrilo Translated by John Gallas read more
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