Collected Poems

Anthony Thwaite's "Collected Poems", issued in his seventy-seventh year, give readers a fresh opportunity to explore the sixteen collections he has published since his debut in the "Fantasy Poets" series in 1953. Although his roots are in the Movement, he has developed a recognisably personal style - once described as 'cunningly modulated eloquence' - and a range of concerns which have defined his poetry from the beginning: memory, history, archaeology, travel (he has lived in Japan and Libya, writing of them with subtlety and affection), the complexity of relationships, and now the frustrations of advancing years. Through his own voice and those he has delicately adopted (most memorably in "The Letters of Synesius" and "Victorian Voices"), he has made a significant contribution to the literature of the last half-century, elegantly and perceptively setting the curiosities of the present against the complexities of the past.