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Selected Poems

Ivor Gurney

Edited by P.J. Kavanagh

Cover of Ivor Gurney's Selected Poems
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Categories: 20th Century
Imprint: OxfordPoets
Publisher: Carcanet Press
Available as:
Paperback (140 pages)
(Pub. Feb 2001)
9780192880659
£9.99 £8.99
  • Description
  • Editor
  • Reviews
  • Recognized as one of the most promising poets and composers of his time, Ivor Gurney's full creative gifts never reached fruition. Gurney trained as a composer with Herbert Howells at the Royal College of Music, composing his own work as well as setting others' compositions to lyrics. Despite his fractured mental health, Gurney continued writing and planning other books. This collection demonstrates his voice and skill as a poet.
    P.J. Kavanagh
    P.J. Kavanagh was born in England in 1931, and worked as a lecturer, actor and broadcaster, as well as a writer. His Collected Poems were published in 1992, the year in which he was given the Cholmondeley Award for poetry. His memoir The Perfect Stranger won the Richard Hillary Prize in ... read more
    Praise for P.J. Kavanagh 'To hear the truth so devastatingly and yet so joyfully encountered is rare in an age where autobiography has been flattened by the massed weight of political and public reminiscence. This autobiography, from its beginning to its bitter end, is a celebration of joy: joy in youth, in woman, in male camaraderie, in the struggle of art, in married love.'
    Times Literary Supplement 
    'There is plenty of quietly glittering intellect in these poems... he has an eye for rural things, birds, plants, weather; all are subdued to the colour of his own mind, its knowledge of loss, its recurrent perception of the world as a place to which it belongs and does not belong... this collection amply demonstrates Kavanagh's distinguished place among contemporary poets.'
    Frank Kermode
    'The pleasure of reading these poems is the pleasure of exceptionally good company. Kavanagh has exactly the right kind of curiosity - neither pedantic nor trifling, but casual in the best sense.'
    Wynn Wheldon, Spectator
    'There is plenty of quietly glittering intellect in these poems... he has an eye for rural things, birds, plants, weather; all are subdued to the colour of his own mind, its knowledge of loss, its recurrent perception of the world as a place to which it belongs and does not belong... this collection amply demonstrates Kavanagh's distinguished place among contemporary poets.'
    Frank Kermode
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Cover of Collected Poems
Collected Poems Ivor Gurney,
Edited by P.J. Kavanagh
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