Poems from East Anglia - Softcover

'Poems from East Anglia establishes Crossley-Holland among the finest native voices of the area. He is a poet listening to his own history through the clamour of seabirds and gales and well-caught scraps of this and that which blow across the land. His language has been honed by the Norfolk and Suffolk climate itself, and has the polish of split flint.'Ronald Blythe

Family and community, landscape and memory in East Anglia: these are the four corners of many of Kevin Crossley-Holland's powerful poems. Set in the present and in the past, in buttermilk villages and in Constable country, on the marshes and right on the edge that's 'bucking and amber and hilarious', they are brightly lit and deeply felt. This memorable selection contains published and unpublished work written over twenty-five years, including the striking sequence "Waterslain".Peter Porter has written of these poems that they 'give off as authentic a smell of East Anglia as do Crabbe's, and, as with Crabbe's, the beauty of language is hard-won.' Although currently living in his native England, from 1990 to 1995 Crossley-Holland taught at Saint Thomas University in Minnesota as a Fulbright Scholar and was Chair of the Humanities and Fine Arts Department. "Poems from East Anglia" collects new poems and a selection from Crossley-Holland's seven previous collections. Readers are treated to a tour of the poet's native East Anglia as he writes about the families, community, landscape, and memories of this area in England. Set in the present and in the past, in buttermilk villages and in John Constable country, in the marshes, these powerful poems are brightly lit and deeply felt.