Collected Poems
Published on 9. May 2023
Book
Paperback/Softback
766 pages
978-1-84861-892-3 (ISBN)
Description
A major event, this volume presents some 40 years of work.
"Corcoran has as wide a range and as rich a vocabulary as any poet now writing. He possesses a flawless ear, a fresh eye for image and detail, penetrating analysis and a storyteller's gift. He can shift registers suddenly, from lyric to formal mode to common speech, and even a snatch of song... Kelvin Corcoran is one of the rare true poets. Reading him is a privilege and a pleasure, a new awareness." -David Wevill
"Corcoran is a superbly skilled lyricist." -Frances Leviston, The Guardian
"Kelvin Corcoran has allied a strikingly individual intelligence to a genuinely musical sensibility." -Don Paterson, The Observer
"The 'straight music' of the English lyrical tradition drives these poems that are honed, hard, elegant and economic. Then, suddenly, brilliance flashes out against the grain, in the flaws. It is 'the ripped voice makes us free'." -Rosmarie Waldrop
"Corcoran is at the front of contemporary poetry: the lyric grace of his language is threaded with an historical perspective that raises the poetry far beyond the world of a localised present." -Ian Brinton, Tears in the Fence
"Kelvin Corcoran's recent work inhabits the imagination as a distinct sphere of abundance, drawn from reality as a celebration of the true scope of the mind. And the instrument of this is a written eloquence which takes in the past of poetry and of the spirit as a freshly lived condition." -Peter Riley, PN Review
"Corcoran has as wide a range and as rich a vocabulary as any poet now writing. He possesses a flawless ear, a fresh eye for image and detail, penetrating analysis and a storyteller's gift. He can shift registers suddenly, from lyric to formal mode to common speech, and even a snatch of song... Kelvin Corcoran is one of the rare true poets. Reading him is a privilege and a pleasure, a new awareness." -David Wevill
"Corcoran is a superbly skilled lyricist." -Frances Leviston, The Guardian
"Kelvin Corcoran has allied a strikingly individual intelligence to a genuinely musical sensibility." -Don Paterson, The Observer
"The 'straight music' of the English lyrical tradition drives these poems that are honed, hard, elegant and economic. Then, suddenly, brilliance flashes out against the grain, in the flaws. It is 'the ripped voice makes us free'." -Rosmarie Waldrop
"Corcoran is at the front of contemporary poetry: the lyric grace of his language is threaded with an historical perspective that raises the poetry far beyond the world of a localised present." -Ian Brinton, Tears in the Fence
"Kelvin Corcoran's recent work inhabits the imagination as a distinct sphere of abundance, drawn from reality as a celebration of the true scope of the mind. And the instrument of this is a written eloquence which takes in the past of poetry and of the spirit as a freshly lived condition." -Peter Riley, PN Review
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Exeter
United Kingdom
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 152 mm
Thickness: 45 mm
Weight
1222 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-84861-892-3 (9781848618923)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Kelvin Corcoran grew up in the English Midlands the son of an alcoholic Irish father and loving mother. As a child he benefited from free school milk and the family allowance, which was essential. Through the influence of a good teacher, he went to university and read poetry. His first book was published in 1985. He was a teacher for 33 years and then for a while a voluntary worker in the NHS. After the discovery of poetry, the second great change in his life was meeting his wife, Melanie. His work belongs to no school and has been consistently praised for its lyricism and intelligence, commended by the Poetry Society and the Forward Prize committee, and commissioned by the Arts Council and Medicine Unboxed. He lives in Brussels, in Greece, and in Penwith, Cornwall.