Lately

Lately is Stephen Yeo's first collection of poems. Alongside his poems, Stephen Yeo has published widely in the fields of co-operative, religious, voluntary, labour and socialist association. After teaching social history at the University of Sussex, he became Principal of Ruskin College, Oxford and Chair of the Manchesterbased Cooperative College and of the Trust which looks after the Pioneers' Museum in Rochdale and the National Co-operative Archive. As a founder of QueenSpark Books in Brighton, he helped to bring into being the Federation of Worker Writers and Community Publishers (FWWCP). "Stephen Yeo's poetry engages both the mind and the mind's eye. It leads us through finely judged, often profound, reflections on human experience, culture and meaning making and into the spiritual realm. And it does so with story and image, a sincere questioning tone, and humour. Lately reads like something between spiritual exercises and a botanist's almanac: and it adds to these a light touch that welcomes us in." ~ Fiona Sampson, prize-winning poet and literary biographer "Step into this gathering of Stephen Yeo's poems and you enter a room with animated conversations going on all round you - with history and horticulture, with love, loss, language, family and yes, boldly, unpretentiously, with God. You meet a restless and curious mind that wants to grasp the world whole, fired by a sense that poetry is the way to do it." ~ Philip Gross, T.S. Eliot poetry prize winner 2009 "The distinction of Stephen Yeo's poems is that they range widely across the things that matter in the world, bringing to bear on it a verbal adroitness and wit that bring everything to life. These are poems of principle that keep us amused as they engage us." ~ Bernard O'Donoghue, poet and Emeritus Fellow, Wadham College "How do you make sense of a bewildering and often violent world, which may or may not be explainable in religious terms? Stephen's remarkable poems memorialise a whole generation's boyhoods in the shadow of the atom bomb, and consider too modern China, Auden, the power of nature and the necessity of hanging on to the best we know." ~ Merryn Williams, poet, critic and translator

About the Author :
LATELY is Stephen Yeo's first collection of poetry. He has published widely in the fields of co-operative, labour movement, socialist, religious, adult educational and voluntary associations. After teaching and writing social history at the University of Sussex for many years, he became Principal of Ruskin College in Oxford and subsequently Chair of the Manchester-based Co-operative College and of the trustees of the National Co-operative Archive. As a cofounder of QueenSpark Books in Brighton, he helped to bring the Federation of Worker Writers and Community Publishers into being.