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The Saner Places
The Saner Places

The Saner Places

POETRY

192 Pages, 5 x 8.5

Formats: Trade Paper

Trade Paper, $15.95 (US $15.95) (CA $18.95)

Publication Date: July 2011

ISBN 9781907587078

Rights: US & CA

Enitharmon Press (Jul 2011)

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Overview

The Saner Places: Selected Poems is both an essential, accessible introduction to a key figure in contemporary British poetry and an entirely new take on a lifetime's work by the author himself. Drawing on six decades of work, this selection charts Alan Brownjohn's idiosyncratic take on the issues for which his poetry is known – love (and sex), time (and mortality) and our ecological and cultural environment (threatened and abused). Even to new readers, poems such as his famously prophetic ‘We are going to see the rabbit’ will be familiar. To all, up to those best acquainted with Brownjohn, these poems will confirm a reputation as one of the most thought-provoking – and entertaining – poets committed to interpreting the modern world.

Reviews

"This 80th birthday selection spans his career. Its invigorating commentary on changing times and moods always arrives in lively and appealing forms: from the young verse rebel's dystopian lyric about 'the only rabbit in England/ Sitting behind a barbed-wire fence' to the post-'war on terror' Audenesque lament, 'December 31st 2009'." —Boyd Tonkin, Independent

Author Biography

Poet Alan Brownjohn was born in London on 28 July 1931 and was educated at Merton College, Oxford. He worked as a schoolteacher between 1957 and 1965 and lectured at Battersea College of Education and South Bank Polytechnic until he left to become a full-time freelance writer in 1979. A regular broadcaster, reviewer and contributor to journals including the Times Literary Supplement, Encounter and the Sunday Times, Alan Brownjohn was poetry critic for the New Statesman and was Chairman of the Poetry Society between 1982 and 1988. He has also served on the Arts Council literature panel, was a Labour councillor and a candidate for Parliament. His first collection of poetry, The Railings, was published in 1961. Other poetry books include Collected Poems 1952-1983 (1983, re-issued in 1988) and The Observation Car (1990). He is also the author of three novels, The Way You Tell Them: A Yarn of the Nineties (1990), The Long Shadows (1997) and A Funny Old Year (2001), as well as two books for children and a critical study of the poet Philip Larkin. His novel Windows on the Moon was published in 2009. His latest poetry collection Ludbrooke & Others was published by Enitharmon in July 2010. Alan received the Writers' Guild's Lifetime Achievement Award in 2007.