Bedouin of the London Evening

Rosemary Tonks (1928-2014) was a colourful figure in the London literary scene during the 1960s. She published two poetry collections, Notes on Cafes and Bedrooms (Putnam, 1963) and Iliad of Broken Sentences (The Bodley Head, 1967), and six novels, from Opium Fogs (1963) to The Halt During the Chase (1972), wrote for The Observer, The Times, The New York Review of Books, The Listener, The New Statesman and Encounter, and presented poetry programmes for the BBC.Following the death of her mother, a crisis of religious faith, her divorce and nearly losing her sight, she renounced literature, suppressed her own books, left London for Bournemouth and cut herself off from family and friends. After travelling to Jerusalem in 1981 to be baptised by the River Jordan, she created a new identity for herself, her whereabouts known only to family. Thought to be living somewhere as a recluse, she was in fact continuing to inhabit cafes and parks, and was active as a silent, often solitary evangelist working outside any church, giving out Bibles in London and Bournemouth. In 2009 she was the subject of Brian Patten's BBC radio documentary The Poet Who Vanished. All her published poetry was made available for the first time in over 40 years in Bedouin of the London Evening: Collected Poems, published by Bloodaxe Books in October 2014. This edition also includes a small selection of her prose. A second edition with an expanded introduction and an additional prose piece was issued in 2016.

'My reading life has been immeasurably improved by Rosemary Tonks's Bedouin of the London Evening' - Max Porter, Guardian (Books of the Year 2015); 'The poet Rosemary Tonks her name in the 60s and 70s, then withdrew from public sight and published nothing in the later part of her life. Following her recent death, Neil Astley has collected and introduced her work in Bedouin of the London Evening. It's a highly original collection, mingling savage realism with a surreal fancy, and it restores an essential voice of late-20th-century British poetry to its rightful place.' - Andrew Motion, Guardian (Books of the Year 2014); 'The world has waited for this slim volume since 1973...It is important for two reasons. First, we can read again her challenging and original poetry, long out of print; and second, with her devoted present publisher Neil Astley's excellent introduction, we learn what happened to Tonks...Tonks repays deeper study: densely allusive, self-mocking, richly spiked with insight - and beauty. A great treat. An extreme spirit.' - Caroline Bowder, Church Times (Christmas books); 'Between 1963 and 1974, Rosemary Tonks published two collections of poetry as well as novels, short stories and reviews. Then she disappeared... Now, finally, Neil Astley has been able to compile her collected poems. And what a joy they are: sensuous, witty, alternately cool and hot-blooded. Tonks's verse, perfectly tuned to the life of cities, channels Baudelaire and Rimbaud, but always in her own easy voice.' - New Statesman, NS Recommends; 'Her reappearance in this important and well-documented book, which includes two penetrating reviews, a short story and an interview, is the best sort of rediscovery: one that disrupts our sense of poetic continuity even as it restores it.' - Patrick McGuinness, London Review of Books;'...like Plath, Tonks made an extraordinary jump with her second collection, arriving at a confident and utterly distinctive voice. Like Ariel, Iliad seems to open new doors in poetry; like Ariel, the new beginning was also an abrupt end.' - Suzi Feay, Independent on Sunday; 'After publishing two seedily glittering books of verse in the 1960s, Rosemary Tonks - who died this year- renounced literature. This exciting collection restores to us a unique oeuvre which evokes the 'sofas, fugs and cinemas' of post-war London, as though the French poet Baudeliare had written in a Soho greasy spoon.' - Jeremy Noel-Tod, Sunday Times;'Forty years after her disappearance, this fascinating collection of her work returns her to us... this writing has unmistakable flair. It is bohemian, ardent, sensual and of its time.' - Kate Kellaway, Observer

• 9 Introduction by Neil AstleyNotes on Cafes and Bedrooms (1963) 45 Love Territory 46 Running Away 49 20th Century Invalid 50 Diary of a Rebel 51 Bedroom in an Old City 54 The Flaneur and the Apocalypse 55 Fear's Blindworm 56 The Solitary's Bedroom 57 Rainfield and Argument 58 Gutter Lord 60 Poet and Iceberg 61 Oath 62 Ace of Hooligans 65 Rome 66 Hypnos and Warm Winters 67 Escape! 68 Story of a Hotel Room 69 Bedouin of the London Evening 70 Boy in the Lane 72 Fog Peacocks 73 Poet as Gambler 74 Apprentice 76 Blouson Noir 77 Bedouin of the London Morning 78 April and the Ideas-Merchant 79 On the advantage of being ill-treated by the WorldIliad of Broken Sentences (1967) 85 The Sofas, Fogs, and Cinemas 87 The Sash Window 88 Epoch of the Hotel Corridor 89 Badly-chosen Lover 90 The Little Cardboard Suitcase 91 Hydromaniac 92 Students in Bertorelli's 93 The Desert Wind Elite 95 An Old-fashioned Traveller on the Trade Routes 96 The Ice-cream Boom Towns 97 Addiction to an Old Mattress 98 Song of the October Wind 100 Done for! 101 Orpheus in Soho 102 Dressing-gown Olympian 103 Farewell to Kurdistan 106 Black Kief and the Intellectual 107 The Drinkers of Coffee 108 To a Certain Young Man 110 A Few Sentences AwaySelected Prose 113 Note on Notes on Cafes and Bedrooms [1963] 115 Interview with Peter Orr [1963] 122 Cutting the Marble [1973] 132 The Wisdom of Colette [1974] 140 The Pick-up or L'Ercole d'Oro [1973] 157 On being down, but not quite out, in Paris [1976]