New Selected Poems

In his foreword to this book, Derek Mahon notes that P.J. Kavanagh’s poems ‘elude the obvious categories. He has never been one of a “school”’. A poet of rural England, yet of Irish ancestry, Kavanagh ‘has always stood slightly apart’. He championed the poems of Ivor Gurney and shares with Gurney not only a personal landscape (that of Gloucestershire) but a poetic commitment to the actual and specific, to nature writing at its most rootedly precise. His is, in Mahon’s words, ‘a unique personal record’: ‘a lifetime’s dedication has produced its rich results’.

Table of Contents:
Foreword by Derek Mahon from One and One (1959)Dedication Poem Djakarta Yeats’s Tower Intimations of Unreality Merton Garden Beggar at the Villa d’Este from On the Way to the Depot (1967)Saint Tropez The Spring August by the RiverWestwell, OxfordshireOn the Way to the DepotAfternoon in SneemThe Temperance Billiards RoomsIn the Rubber DinghyPerfection Isn’t Like a Perfect StoryNot Being a Man of Action Satire IGoldie sapiensMayNo One from About Time (1970)One: Son and Father Seven: from ‘Albert Poems’ Nine: ‘Domesticities’ Ten: Father and Son from Edward Thomas in Heaven (1974)Occasional Birds Sometimes Commuter For Bruno Eclogue All I Want Real Sky A Box of Sons November the First Child’s Walk Driving Back Opened and Fastened Picture a Father And Light Fading The Clapham Elephants Edward Thomas in Heaven Consolations from Life Before Death (1979)Dome A Hard SettingWhile the Sun ShinesWhere You Watching AreA Single TreeDon’t Forget the Keeper, SirA Great Gale, 1976Breakfast in ItalyIvor GurneyThe DeadSimileGardeningBeyond DecorationThe Moon in ChargeSun OvercastElderDandelionPilgrimsBorris House, Co. CarlowFor C.E.K.Spring ArrivalThank-You LetterPrayingSealIllnessMemory from Presences (1987)Birth of Middle AgeWalmer CastleA Small WorldLate AcknowledgementFarmworkerArs est celare artemPoliticsBirthday Visit Prayer in Middle Age Constitutional Nature Poet1. Voices 2. The Attempt 3. One Sentence, and Another 4. Companions 5. A Clean Sensation from An Enchantment (1991)A ghost repliesThe old notebook Autumn Memorial service No more songs January evening Blackbird in Fulham They lift their heads Minimal prayer suggestion Natural history Hope Falklands, 1982 Whitsun Resistance ITMA In the middle of the wood The belt Quieter than Clichy Inishmaine Severn aisling Message from Something About (2004)Slow as grassThe new man November Angels Tug o’ war A gottle o’ Guinness Mood indigo, tune Irish After Westwell ‘Constancy to an ideal object’ Ascension window at Fairford Whitsun Vox pop Small voice Seasonals1. ‘Summer…’ 2. ‘Combine-harvesters…’ 3. ‘Rain…’ 4. ‘Later, pale-faced hogweed…’ What I didn’t say to Thomas Two syllabics1. Christmas walk2. Test Match SpecialFor Kate Three score and ten Gold Dawns London Bridge Job Something about Index of Titles Index of First Lines

About the Author :
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 1966, and his first novel A Song and Dance was awarded the Guardian Fiction Prize in 1968. From 1983 to 1996 P.J. Kavanagh was a columnist on the Spectator, and from 1996 to 2002 on The Times Literary Supplement. In addition to his four novels for adults and two children's novels, he wrote a travel autobiography (Finding Connections), a literary companion (Voices in Ireland) and has edited The Oxford Book of Short Poems and The Essential G.K. Chesterton, and, for Carcanet, a new edition of his Collected Poems of Ivor Gurney.

Review :
'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 on P.J. Kavanagh's Collected Poems