Leaving the Hills

Leaving the Hills by Tony Curtis is a collection full of stories from everywhere by a great Welsh poet at his best. From the Welsh mountains to the Hollywood Hills, these lyrical poems explore events from both history and modern life, questioning how far we’ve really progressed. Filled with dramatic monologues and personalities as various as Roger Bannister, Muhammed Ali, Billie Holiday and Claude Debussy, Leaving the Hills is a collection which explores and defines the times we live in. The title becomes a metaphor for that moment when we are forced to choose what to take and what to leave behind. Curtis chooses moments of brilliance, of epiphany, of knowledge and of vividness. In these poems, there is everything he would wish to save from the fire.

About the Author :
Tony Curtis is an established and acclaimed poet, novelist and critic. He has written and edited over forty books, most recently his debut novel ‘Darkness in the City of Light’, which was shortlisted for the Paul Torday Memorial Prize, and ‘Where the Birds Sing our Names’, an anthology of poems for the children’s charity Tŷ Hafan. He was Wales’s first Professor of Poetry at the University of Glamorgan, where he developed and directed the M. Phil in Writing. He was awarded a Gregory Award in 1972; won the National Poetry Competition in 1983; and the Dylan Thomas Award for Spoken Poetry in 1993, judged by Dannie Abse and Dylan’s daughter Aeronwy. He had a Cholmondeley Award in 1998 and a D.Litt. in 2004. He is also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

Review :
"This wide-ranging collection sees Curtis writing at the height of his powers and confirms his position as one of Wales's leading poets." - Neil Leadbeater, Write Out Loud "Curtis's poems are historical, biographical and cordial, but they are never self-referentially confessional; at the same time, they bear witness to life's joys and, towards the end of the collection, its touching intimations of mortality... they are still emblems, in content at least, of contemporary Welsh poetry's generational vigour, here represented in work of depth, artistry, and sweeping breadth." - Nigel Jarratt, ACUMEN "His words break through walls and cross boundaries not in an effort to reach a final destination, but in an attempt to learn the necessary arts of modern survival." - Professor M. Wynn Thomas "The poems reverberate with present, sensuous experiences, but beyond their immediacy there is a deep hinterland of public and private histories, grief and delight." - Helen Dunmore