Poems from East Anglia

Family and community, landscape and memory in East Anglia: these are the four corners of many of Kevin Crossley-Holland's powerful poems. Set in the present and in the past, in buttermilk villages and in Constable country, on the marshes and right on the edge that's 'bucking and amber and hilarious', they are brightly lit and deeply felt. This memorable selection contains published and unpublished work written over twenty-five years, including the striking sequence "Waterslain".Peter Porter has written of these poems that they 'give off as authentic a smell of East Anglia as do Crabbe's, and, as with Crabbe's, the beauty of language is hard-won.' Although currently living in his native England, from 1990 to 1995 Crossley-Holland taught at Saint Thomas University in Minnesota as a Fulbright Scholar and was Chair of the Humanities and Fine Arts Department. "Poems from East Anglia" collects new poems and a selection from Crossley-Holland's seven previous collections. Readers are treated to a tour of the poet's native East Anglia as he writes about the families, community, landscape, and memories of this area in England. Set in the present and in the past, in buttermilk villages and in John Constable country, in the marshes, these powerful poems are brightly lit and deeply felt.

About the Author :
Kevin Crossley-Holland's deep interest in the early literature of north-west Europe is reflected in much of his writing. In addition to his Selected Poems and Moored Man, a cycle of North Norfolk poems with watercolours and etchings by Norman Ackroyd, he is the author of The Penguin Book of Norse Myths ,while his anthology The Anglo-Saxon World contains his well-known translations ofBeowulf and many of the shorter poems. His celebrated books for children, including the Arthur trilogy, Gatty's Tale and retelling of Beowulf illustrated by Charles Keeping, have been translated into well over twenty languages. With the poet Lawrence Sail, Crossley-Holland has edited a collection of modern metaphorical riddles,The New Exeter Book of Riddles ,and Light Unlocked, an anthology of Christmas Card poems. He is also the co-author with Ivan Cutting of The Wuffings, a play about Anglo-Saxon East Anglia, and the librettist for Nicola LeFanu of two operas based on medieval legends, The Green Children and The Wildman. Kevin Crossley-Holland is an Honorary Fellow of St Edmund Hall, Oxford, patron of the Society for Storytelling and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He lives on the North Norfolk coast. http://www.Kevincrossley-holland.com

Review :
'Poems from East Anglia establishes Crossley-Holland among the finest native voices of the area. He is a poet listening to his own history through the clamour of seabirds and gales and well-caught scraps of this and that which blow across the land. His language has been honed by the Norfolk and Suffolk climate itself, and has the polish of split flint.'Ronald Blythe