Full Description
A charming new collection of previously unpublished and uncollected poems by Sir John Betjeman.
John Betjeman's unforgettable poems on landscape and suburbia, desire and death, faith and doubt, helped to establish him as the beloved voice of a nation. Yet the ten books of poetry he published individually, later assembled in the Collected Poems, were an incomplete representation of his poetic oeuvre. Many poems published in journals or magazines were excluded from Betjeman's books by him or his editors and a substantial number of finished poems were never printed at all, remaining unknown to readers - until now.
In this exquisite new edition of Betjeman's verse editor Kevin Gardner promises new treasures for 'Betj's' admirers the world over. Betjeman wrote many of these poems in the late 1920s and early 1930s, when he was still developing his unique poetic voice. They reveal a young poet experimenting with both Modernism and post-Romanticism, yet influenced by Shelley and Pope among others.
Some of these poems are profoundly psychological, personal and deeply affecting to read today. Several have the delicate and eccentric touch of much of his early poetry and shed new light on his growth as a young poet, while many others reflect the sustained maturity of his later verse. Almost all are typically amusing and highly witty in the style typical of Betjeman; some verge on the bawdy and even, in one instance, point towards homosexuality.
These charming and surprising new discoveries, found in archives as far apart as Austin, Texas, and Christ Church, Oxford, will delight poetry lovers and introduce a whole new generation to Betjeman's unforgettable work.
Contents
Preface
Introduction
Notes
HARVEST BELLS: NEW AND UNCOLLECTED POEMS
A.D. 1980
Ye Olde Cottage (Quite Near a Town)
The Song of a Cold Wind
A Sentimental Poem
Sweets and Cake
Dentist's Dining Room
Sezincote
Pastoral Incident
A Squib on Norman Cameron
Blisland, Bodmin
Home Thoughts from Exile
Work
Popular Song
Nine O'Clock
Emily Wren
The Tamarisks
Sonnet
Wisteria Branches
A Poem by My Old Bear Archibald
Harvest Bells
Country Silence
Channel Crossing
Eighteenth-Century Pint
Lerici 1930
Evangelistic Hymn
Sudden Conversion
Zion
The Outer Suburbs
St Aloysius Church, Oxford
Charterhouse School Song
London Spreading
Satires of Circumstance
The Heartless Heart's Ease: A Lament by Tom Moore
The Most Popular Girl in School
The Electrification of Lambourne End
Edgware
The Wykehamist at Home
Tea with the Poets
A Poet's Prayer
On Miss E. Badger, 9 Beverley Gardens, Wembley Park, Middlesex, Who Sat Opposite to Me on the GWR, Ascension Day 1939
Big Business
Chestnut Hair
Clifton 1940
Order Reigns in Warsaw
Prologue Specially Written for the 70th Anniversary Gaiety Theatre, Dublin
To Uffington Ringers
Rosemary Hall
The Tailwaggers' Friend
Margate, 1946
A Memory of 1940
Aberdeen
In Overcliffe
October Bells
The Corporation Architect
The Weary Journalist
The Death of the University Reader of Spanish
A Curate for Great Kirkby
Clay and Spirit
Not Necessarily Leeds
The St Paul's Appeal
The Divine Society
Village Wedding
John Edward Bowle
1962
Prologue Spoken by Peggy Ashcroft at the Opening of Peggy Ashcroft Theatre, Croydon, 5 November 1962
A Good Investment
St Mary's Chapel of Ease
The Finest Work in England: I.K. Brunel
La Cometa Moraira
A Lament for Middlesex
Castle Howard
Lines Read at the Wing Airport Resistance Movement Protest Meeting, June 1970
Sonnet
Revenge
St Mary-le-Strand
My Landlady's Dog
Guyhirn Chapel of Ease
St Bartholomew's Hospital
Who Took Away...
Lines on the Unmasking of the Surveyor of the Queen's Pictures
Dawlish
Notes on the poems
Appendix A: A Portuguese Translation
Appendix B: A Possible Attribution
