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Complete Poems

Muriel Spark

Complete Poems
10% off eBook (EPUB)
10% off Paperback
Categories: 20th Century, 21st Century, Bestsellers, British, Christianity, Scottish, Women
Imprint: Carcanet Poetry
Publisher: Carcanet Press
Available as:
Paperback (160 pages)
(Pub. Oct 2015)
9781784101244
£14.99 £13.49
eBook (EPUB) Needs ADE!
(Pub. Oct 2015)
9781784101251
£14.99 £13.49
Digital access available through Exact Editions
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  • Description
  • Author
  • Reviews
  • In her foreword to All The Poems (2003) Muriel Spark wrote, ‘Although most of my life has been devoted to fiction, I have always thought of myself as a poet. I do not write “poetic” prose, but feel that my outlook on life and my perceptions of events are those of a poet.’ Including previously uncollected work, this new edition demonstrates her ear for the rightness of a line and her eye for the telling detail, her command of poetic forms and her ability to rise to the different challenges of freer verse. Spark’s poems are witty, idiosyncratic and haunting, transforming the familiar into glittering moments of strangeness, revealing the dark – and light – music beneath the mundane.


    Muriel Spark was born in Edinburgh in 1918. After some years living in Africa, she returned to England, where she edited Poetry Review from 1947 to 1949 and published her first volume of poems, The Fanfarlo, in 1952. She eventually made her home in Italy. Her many novels include Memento ... read more
    'Mysterious, haunting, meticulously wrought.'
    Stand Magazine


    Praise for Muriel Spark 'Spark achieves precisely what she sets out to: no surprise to us now but pretty impressive given that this was her first book.'
    Zoë Strachan, Scottish Review of Books
    'The style is bracingly familiar – beady, ironic, acidulous... She is an astute critic.'
    Anthony Quinn, Daily Mail
    Like all her work, surprising, beautifully written, and with unnerving glimpses into the abyss which lies, always, beneath our feet.
    - John Mortimer, Evening Standard
    'The marvellous thing about Muriel Spark's writing is that...it never gets knotted up in its own so-sharp-she'll-cut-herself cleverness. Spark's writing has a subtle merriment about it, a lightness of touch, a willingness to share in fleeting moments of mundane love and pleasure.'
    Jenny Turner, London Review of Books
    'Like all her work, surprising, beautifully written, and with unnerving glimpses into the abyss which lies, always, beneath our feet.'
    John Mortimer, Evening Standard
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