Djuna Barnes (1892-1982) once described herself as the most famous unknown writer, and although her novel, Nightwood is celebrated, her poetry has been a well-kept secret until now. This selection, the only one currently available, contains work writ...

"The Border Ballads" are rooted in the wild and beautiful lands that lie between England and Scotland, a traditionally lawless area whose inhabitants owed allegiance first to kin and laird, and only then to the authorities in London or Edinburgh. Rec...

Mary O'Malley is a natural musician. Her poetry alludes to music – the music of Ireland, the Iberian peninsula, the America of jazz and spiritual – and shares forms with it. Music is spiritual and political at the same time. Her themes embrace the ch...

"How suitable that Dick Davis, who gave us superb English versions of medieval Persian epigrams, should now compose witty, shapely, and polished epigrams that exhibit something like Philip Larkin's mordancy, but with a fine blend of thoughtfulness an...

Nazim Hikmet's poetry combines passion and simplicity with sophistication, producing work of enduring significance. He was both a superb narrative and lyric poet; his immense and continuing popularity in Turkey testifies to his common touch. This ext...

In her second book of poems Sinead Morrissey's worlds grow more diverse, encompassing the Orient, the Antipodes, America and an Ireland which recent history has changed and yet not deeply, a country observed through eyes that travel and time have mad...

The poems in "The Blind Stitch" interweave family, marriage, love and friendship into a larger world of public life. Set in Delanty's native Cork, and in America and India, the book is sewn together with two main conceits. One is that of the leper, w...

Benjamin Britten was a great reader of poetry, and poetry profoundly affected his musical genius and style of composition. Friendships and collaborations with writers – Auden and Forster among them – left their mark. No other composer of songs, not e...

Ivor Gurney's poetic career was unusual. It began in 1917 and 1919 with two small volumes of verse ("Severn and Somme / War's Embers", published by Carcanet). Then in 1922 he entered the asylum from which only an occasional poem in a magazine emerged...