John Greening – författare

Edmund Blunden (1896-1974) was one of the youngest of the war poets, enlisting straight from school to find himself in some of the Western Front's most notorious hot-spots. His prose memoir, written in a rich, allusive vein, full of anecdote and human interest, is unique for its quiet authority and for the potency of its dream-like narrative. Once we accept the archaic conventions and catch the tone--which can be by turns horrifying or hilarious--Undertones of War gradually reveals itself as a masterpiece. It is clear why it has remained in print since it first appeared in 1928.This new edition not only offers the original unrevised version of the prose narrative, written at white heat when Blunden was teaching in Japan and had no access to his notes, but provides a great deal of supplementary material never before gathered together. Blunden's 'Preliminary' expresses the lifelong compulsion he felt 'to go over the ground again' and for half a century he prepared new prefaces, added annotations. All those prefaces and a wide selection of his commentaries are included here--marginalia from friends' first editions, remarks in letters, extracts from later essays, and a substantial part of his war diary. John Greening has provided a scholarly introduction discussing the bibliographical and historical background, and brings his poet's eye to a much expanded (and more representative) selection of Blunden's war poetry. For the first time we can see the poet Blunden as the major figure he was. Blunden had always hoped for a properly illustrated edition of the work, and kept a folder full of possible pictures. The editor, with the Blunden family's help, has selected some of the best of them to include in this new edition.

The Interpretation of Owls is a representative selection of one of the UK's most prolific and respected poets. Edited by Kevin Gardner in consultation with John Greening himself, this first American collection showcases highlights of a remarkable forty-year poetic journey, displaying extraordinary variety and technical skill.The contents (arranged thematically to illustrate Greening's abiding interests and influences) comprise more than 250 poems chosen from twenty individual collections published between 1982 and the present. Kevin Gardner has also made a welcome selection of previously uncollected and unpublished work. Readers of John Greening's accessible and musical lines will find themselves transported from America to England to Iceland to Ireland, with a long stay in Egypt and brief stopovers in several other countries.Passing from the present to the ancient world and back, these poems reimagine historical figures, look inward at the poetic self, and explore the very meaning of home. This outward journeying through time and space is reinforced by a constant questing for spiritual meaning—reminiscent of T. S. Eliot, whose influence on Greening has been profound. Though we are unlikely to find him wrestling with angels, Greening is nevertheless constantly hoping for revelation, attuned to the numinous, treating creation as sacred, and ready to find a world of spirituality in history, myth, or even a lump of East Anglian clay.The Interpretation of Owls features an author's preface, an editor's introduction, two indexes, and for readers who want to experience the work in its order of original publication, a chronological table of contents. Additionally, there is an invaluable new interview with the poet in which he discusses with the editor the background to some of the works.

The English poet U. A. Fanthorpe (1929–2009) liked to call herself "a middle-aged drop-out," having abandoned a successful teaching career to focus on her poetry, even concealing her Oxford degree so she could find paid work—at Hoover, then as a hospital receptionist. This gave her a chance to study people, which is what her wonderful poems do best.Fanthorpe's verse is instinctively English, often very moving, frequently funny, invariably rooted in her faith. Fanthorpe and her partner, Rosie Bailey, became Quakers in the 1980s. These poems touch on spiritual matters, dramatize Bible stories, and are underpinned by a profound moral sense. Fanthorpe does not judge; rather, she watches, records, and allows her words to do their work.When her first small-press collection appeared in 1978, it was an unexpected hit. Penguin brought out an early Selected Poems in 1986, and her poetry began to reach beyond the usual readership, praised by celebrities and even politicians. She found herself on the school exam syllabus, then receiving the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry. She was the first woman to be nominated for the Oxford Professor of Poetry. Despite Fanthorpe's domestic success, her work is still largely unfamiliar beyond the UK. In this volume, Not My Best Side: Selected Poems, distinguished poet John Greening selects poems from across her books, adding an introduction and notes. Oxford's current Professor of Poetry, A. E. Stallings, also contributes a brilliant preface.

Accompanied Voices is a unique book: not only is it a highly readable anthology of some of the most memorable and accessible international writing about classical music, but also a moving commentary by one set of practisingartists on the work of another.Accompanied Voices is a unique book: not only is it a highly readable anthology of some of the most memorable and accessible international writing about classical music, and a moving commentary by one set of practising artists on the work of another. There have been several anthologies of "music poems", but never one which follows the story of western music through from the Renaissance to the twenty-first century. This is in effect a chronologicalguide to the major composers of the last four hundred years, written in the language which comes closest to music itself - poetry. Readers will find in Accompanied Voices the same pleasure that they might find in simply putting on a CD and listening. Every page brings something to arrest or transport and there is extraordinary diversity of response. Anecdote, epiphany, portrait, meditation... but many of these poets offer intellectual insights too and even critiques - there is far more variety here than any straightforward music essay can manage. These poems move beyond the mere names of composers and their works, reaching for more universal concerns. Major poets represented include Geoffrey Hill, Ted Hughes, Elizabeth Jennings, Michael Longley, Andrew Motion, Peter Porter, Siegfried Sassoon, Jo Shapcott, Anne Stevenson and Charles Tomlinson among a total of nearly a hundred writers.JOHN GREENING is a poet and received a Cholmondeley Award in 2008. He is also a Hawthornden Fellow and a Fellow of the English Association. He has published studies of the Poets of the First World War, Yeats, Hardy, Edward Thomas and Elizabethan Love Poets.

Growing up on the Isle of Lewis, Iain Crichton Smith spoke only Gaelic until he was five. But at school in Bayble and then Stornoway, everything had to be in English. Like many islanders before and since, his culture is divided: two languages, two histories entailing exile, a central theme of his poetry. His divided perspective sharply delineates the tyranny of history and religion, of the cramped life of small communities; it gives him a tender eye for the struggle of women and men in a world defined by denials.Deer on the High Hills: Selected Poems includes forty years' work and proves that big themes - love, history, power, submission, death - can be addressed without the foil of irony and acquire resonance when given a local habitation and a voice that risks pure, impassioned speech. Editor John Greening provides indexes, a preface and an essay on the life and work of this important poet.

Contraflow takes a completely new approach to the subject of Englishness, and in this stimulating and entertaining anthology two poetic currents flow against each other, so that different decades merge, well-known stanzas brushing shoulders with more neglected verse. A Guardian and Sunday Times poetry book of the year.

Formed of sixty fifteen-line stanzas, this haunting and consistently entertaining collection can be read like a journal, tracking lines of thought through time and space, painting detailed, witty and moving pictures of a countryside and life that lie unchanged, even through periods of great upheaval – political, ecological and cultural.

John Greening’s personal selection aims to restore Arnold’s name as one of the finest poets of the Victorian era. Readers may be surprised to learn just how ahead of his time Arnold was in his tastes and values, as well as in his early use of free verse.

Sharing what he’s learnt during half a century’s creative work, John Greening gives us an insight into the life of a poet, playwright, editor, reviewer, teacher and performer. Eminently readable, amusing and informative, A High Calling is a rich resource for anyone with an interest in good writing.

The ‘country house poem’ was born in the seventeenth century as a fruitful way of flattering potential patrons. But the genre’s popularity faded – ironically, just as ‘country house society’ was emerging. It was only when the power and influence of the landed classes had all but ebbed away that poets returned to the theme, attracted perhaps by the buildings’ irresistible dereliction, but equally by their often very personal histories. This is the first complete anthology of modern country house poems, and it shows just how far (as Simon Jenkins points out in his Foreword) poems can ‘penetrate the souls of buildings’. Over 160 distinguished poets representing a diversity of class, race, gender, and generation offer fascinating perspectives on stately exteriors and interiors, gardens both wild and cultivated, crumbling ruins and the extraordinary secrets they hide. There are voices of all kinds, whether it’s Edith Sitwell recreating her childhood, W. B. Yeats and Wendy Cope pondering Lissadell, or Simon Armitage’s labourer confronting the Lady who’s ‘got the lot’. We hear from noble landowners and loyal (or rebellious) servants, and from many an inquisitive day-tripper. The book’s dominant note is elegiac, yet comedy, satire, even strains of Gothic can be heard among these potent reflections. Hollow Palaces reminds us how poets can often be the most perceptive of guides to radical changes in society. The book is illustrated by Rosie Greening.

In To the War Poets John Greening sends dispatches across the decades. In a sequence of verse letters he addresses the poets of the First World War directly, making connections yet always aware of distance: ‘No larks, / just the passing of traffic.’ Greening explores ‘Englishness’, but also, in his translations from German poets, goes beyond it. From the discovery of the Sutton Hoo burial in 1939 to the security forces’ shut-down of Heathrow airport in 2006, the presence or threat of conflict underlies Greening’s precise, unsentimental writing.