Collected Sonnets
Published on 4. October 2019
Book
Paperback/Softback
372 pages
978-1-84861-689-9 (ISBN)
Description
Collected Sonnets gathers nine main sequences, along with extracts and fugitive pieces, from a 50-year span. It includes takes on poems from other languages and a large number of previously unpublished texts. Praised by Peter Porter in The Observer for richly re-working Elizabethan elements, Selerie's sonnets have appealed equally to readers with a modernist bent. Standard themes-love, death, time, in land- and sea-scape-are given a radical slant. These poems grapple with emotions and ideas, shaped to give the personal public force. Motifs that emerge in individual sonnets also weave through the whole.
"`What are forms?' asks Gavin Selerie teasingly towards the end of his Collected Sonnets. Long an admirer of American examples by the likes of e.e. cummings, Ted Berrigan and Bernadette Mayer, Selerie re-injects a distinctive English intelligence and sensibility into the sonnet form, working staunchly through a plurality of configurations, subject matters and tones. What are sonnets? `Only a frame and skin for the beating', `a stretched square' or `what's filled with moving'. This is a major and hugely rewarding book by one of the UK's most singular poets."-Jeff Hilson, editor, Reality Street Book of Sonnets
"Selerie is a poet of place, describing urban and rural settings with accuracy and craft ... he's a poet of relationships, creating tender lyrics ... and he's a restlessly experimental writer, always wanting to expand what a poem can do." -Ian McMillan, Shadowtrain
"`What are forms?' asks Gavin Selerie teasingly towards the end of his Collected Sonnets. Long an admirer of American examples by the likes of e.e. cummings, Ted Berrigan and Bernadette Mayer, Selerie re-injects a distinctive English intelligence and sensibility into the sonnet form, working staunchly through a plurality of configurations, subject matters and tones. What are sonnets? `Only a frame and skin for the beating', `a stretched square' or `what's filled with moving'. This is a major and hugely rewarding book by one of the UK's most singular poets."-Jeff Hilson, editor, Reality Street Book of Sonnets
"Selerie is a poet of place, describing urban and rural settings with accuracy and craft ... he's a poet of relationships, creating tender lyrics ... and he's a restlessly experimental writer, always wanting to expand what a poem can do." -Ian McMillan, Shadowtrain
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Exeter
United Kingdom
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 152 mm
Thickness: 22 mm
Weight
603 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-84861-689-9 (9781848616899)
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Schweitzer Classification
Person
Gavin Selerie was born in London, where he still lives. His books include Azimuth (1984), Roxy (1996), Le Fanu's Ghost (2006) and Hariot Double (2016)-all long sequences with linked units. These texts often have a visual dimension and Selerie has collaborated extensively with artist-poet Alan Halsey; he has also worked with musicians in performance. Music's Duel: New and Selected Poems 1972-2008 was published by Shearsman in 2009. Critical work includes studies of Charles Olson and Edward Dorn. Selerie's memoir of the London poetry scene 1970-1989 appeared in Clasp, ed. Robert Hampson & Ken Edwards (2016).