New and Collected Poems
• Poetry
• Hardback
• New Titles
Description: U. A. Fanthorpe was that rarest of beings: a poet who was hugely popular with the general public at the same time as being very seriously regarded by fellow poets and literary critics for her originality, wit and humanity. Since Fanthorpe’s death, much of her work has been out of print, and this welcome New and Collected Poems makes available her own selection from over 25 years of distinctive and accessible writing, together with a substantial section of unpublished poems. This definitive volume will delight all her existing fans as well as those who come to her poems for the first time. ‘U.A. Fanthorpe is an extraordinary poet, one of the best of our 20th and 21st centuries. So quietly that we didn’t notice what was happening, her poetry changed the way we see, the way we write. Tender and funny, without show, without noise, using ordinary language, she lit with love the familiar world we had not valued enough, shook us awake with her undecorated language, made us laugh and broke our hearts in a few phrases. It crept up on us unaware – the transformation of what was possible in contemporary English poetry.’ GILLIAN CLARKE ‘U. A. Fanthorpe’s kindness, wisdom and humour shine through in her first-rate and very readable poems.’ WENDY COPE ‘U. A. Fanthorpe's poems occupy a distinguished place in the pantheon of British poets whose work reconciles lucidity with mystery. Her subjects often start life within the confines of familiar experience, then move towards the edge of what is definitely known; the language in which she records this movement is itself a negotiation between the clear and the numinous. In this respect she might be called an heir to Betjeman and Larkin – but she is simultaneously and always her own person: at once consoling and surprising, and heart-warmingly generous in her sympathy with the human condition.’ ANDREW MOTION ‘I was delighted to publish that early masterpiece ‘Not My Best Side’ in 1975, and I went on being delighted by U. A. Fanthorpe's skilful, funny, humane and subversive poems. Her work is real and it is refreshing.’ ANTHONY THWAITE
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