Ian Hamilton's last book, published posthumously in 2002, is a typically brilliant revisiting of the concept of Samuel Johnson's classic Lives of the English Poets, wherein Hamilton considers 45 deceased poets of the twentieth century, offering his personal estimation of what claims they will have on posterity and 'against oblivion.
The Alliterative Morte Arthure - the title given to a four-thousand line poem written sometime around 1400 - was part of a medieval Arthurian revival which produced such masterpieces as Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Sir Thomas Malory's prose Morte D'Arthur.
Arthur Seymour John Tessimond - Jack to his family, John in later life - was born in Birkenhead in 1902 and made his living as an advertising copywriter, but his true writing life was in poetry, three volumes of which he published in his lifetime: The Walls of Glass (1934), Voices in a Giant City (1947), and Selection (1958).
'The most remarkable phenomenon of the English poetic scene during the last ten years or so has been the advent, or perhaps I should say the irruption, of Gavin Ewart' wrote Philip Larkin.
Lunch in Soho with a former lover - but Zanzotti's is under new management, and as the wine takes effect fond memories give way to something closer to the bone.
Keats is the first major biography of this tragic hero of romanticism for some thirty years, and it differs from its predecessors in important respects.
The title, The Government of the Tongue, carries suggestions of both monastic discipline and untrammelled romanticism, and is meant to raise an old question about the rights and status of poetic utterance itself.
Philip Larkin met Monica Jones at University College Leicester in autumn 1946, when they were both twenty-four; he was the newly-appointed assistant librarian and she was an English lecturer.
Hugo Williams's new collection summons the poet's past selves in order of appearance, as in an autobiography, showing in poems as clear as rock pools that the plain truth is only as plain as the props and make-up needed to stage it.
The Secret Life of Poems is a primer which offers a poem - or on occasion an excerpt - succeeding with commentary in which rhythm, form, metre and sources are the order of the day, not ethical commentary or descriptive paraphrase.
Andrew Motion's new collection (his first since Public Property in 2002) offers a ground-breaking variety of lyrics, love poems and elegies, in which private domains of feeling infer other lives and a shared humanity - exploring how people cope with threats to and in the world around them, as soldiers, lovers, artists, writers and citizens.
At the outset of his career Ted Hughes described letter writing as 'excellent training for conversation with the world', and he was to become a prolific master of this art.
Widely regarded as the finest poet of his generation, Seamus Heaney is the subject of numerous critical studies; but no book-length portrait has appeared until now.
A professional man of letters - critic, editor, biographer - though never a professional poet, Ian Hamilton (1938-2001) referred to his poems as 'miraculous lyrical arrivals', and he bided their time with exemplary patience and humility.
This is an imaginative exploration of the art of David Jones which addresses Christian teaching through engagement with selected artistic works: a poem, a painted inscription and a wood engraving.
This is an imaginative exploration of the art of David Jones which addresses Christian teaching through engagement with selected artistic works: a poem, a painted inscription and a wood engraving.
Before, during and after the preparation of Classical Hebrew Poetry: A Guide to its Techniques, Wilfred Watson published several articles on Hebrew poetry in a wide range of periodicals.
During the research for her biography of Francis Thompson, Between Heaven and Charing Cross it became clear to Brigid Boardman that a new edition of his poetry was essential for a full recognition of the range and variety of his work.
Mrs Nowottny's chief aim in this 'valuable book which could serve as a useful introduction to practical criticism' is to inquire what it is that makes the language of poetry poetic.