Selected Poems

Tony Harrison's Selected Poems was first published in 1984 and has been continuously in print in Penguin, through two editions, ever since. This is the first major new edition for many years. The long early sequence 'Palladas' has been dropped but everything else has been retained including the exquisite sonnets about his parents, the notorious 'V', the beautiful 'A Kumquat for John Keats' and many others that are among the best-loved poems of the later twentieth century. In addition powerful and important work from the last twenty or so years has been added, in particular the Gulf and Bosnian war poems commissioned by the Guardian newspaper, which won him the Wilfred Owen Award for Poetry in 2007 - the most powerful war poems of our time. Yet another side of Harrison is represented in the delightfully witty 'Fruitility' - a long poem on the future effects of global warming on the north of England. This is altogether the perfect introduction to the work of one of our best poets.