PLACES AND OTHER POEMS - Softcover

Creator of the lightly fictionalized region of Wessex, where Reading features as Aldbrickham, Thomas Hardy is naturally considered one of England's most topographically sensitive authors. In this new collection of his poems, each selected for its relation to a specific locale, and finely illustrated by Sally Castle, Hardy's imagination appears most intensely engaged, as Peter Robinson's afterword explores, by interrelations of personal experience and the circumstances in which it happens to befall. So 'After a Romantic Day', one of the poems gathered here, proposes that, where human passions are involved, a 'bald steep cutting, rigid, rough, / And moon-lit, was enough / For poetry of place...' This latest offering from the classic poetry series of Reading's Two Rivers Press, renowned for the quality of its artistic, design, and editorial standards, promises delights to both eye and mind for all those new to his verse, as well as, of course, for Hardy lovers everywhere.

Sally Castle's linocut prints, watercolour paintings and lettering have graced numerous book covers, urban street furniture, sculpture and information panels as well as countless living room walls. Peter Robinson is the author of many books of poetry, translations, aphorisms, short fiction and literary criticism, and has been the recipient of the Cheltenham Prize, the John Florio Prize and two Poetry Book Society Recommendations. His most recent publications include Foreigners, Drunks and Babies: Eleven Stories (Two Rivers Press), a chapbook of poems, Like the Living End (Worple Press) and The Oxford Handbook of Contemporary British and Irish Poetry, which he edited. He is Head of the Department of English Literature at the University of Reading and literary editor of Two Rivers Press.