"The Greek Myths" has long been among Graves' most popular works, compendious in scope and lively in the telling. No poet of the twentieth century, not even Ezra Pound, was so compendiously learned as Graves in the origins of our Mediterranean cultur...

Burns Singer spent the 1950's gaining and losing a reputation. He became an Insider, notably as the writer of Times Literary Supplement leaders, yet considered himself in many respects an Outsider, alienating a whole generation of young editors and f...

In "Cinnamon Shade: New and Selected Poems" is the first major collection to be published by Dom Moraes in the UK for over three decades. The collection shows the development of an urbane, witty, fiercely intelligent poet whose extraordinary life and...

Francois Villon was born in Paris in 1431. His life was blighted by destitution and ill health, robbery and murder, torture and exile. While we do not know what became of Villon after his 32nd year, the poems he produced in just six years capture in...

"He is an exquisite poet, a deliverer of nations... a father of light", said Ezra Pound in 1918 of Jules Laforgue. Among the most innovative of poets in the French language, Laforgue was an important influence on the young T. S. Eliot. Part symbolist...

The Anvil New Poets series has built up a reputation for introducing ground-breaking work from the best new poets. The first two volumes featured the first work published in book form by poets such as Kate Clanchy, Colette Bryce, Alice Oswald, Richar...

"Verse &c" collects a substantial body of Oliver Bernard's poetry written since the early 1980s and the publication of "Poems" (1983). His versions of French poets – Rimbaud, Apollinaire – are widely known and praised, but his original work has recen...

Peter Levi's final collection contains the moving lyrics he composed, often while walking round the green in the Gloucestershire village where he lived, as well as other poems written since "Reed Music" (1997). Despite his increasing blindness, his p...

Josep Carner's "Nabi" is a masterpiece of modern Catalan poetry. Based on the biblical story of Jonah, it is essentially a Christian poem, though it is scathing about the effects of religious perversion. In the widest sense a poem about the limits of...

The Word Pavilion is a dazzling construction: two-tiered, each tier divided into sections which, while they harmonise with one another, constitute structures in them-selves. To a selection of 110 poems from his eight earlier books, Middleton adds the...