Full Description
Architecture & Other Poems is a book about paradise
dominated by two sequences.
'Architecture' is a fragmentary narrative spread across forty-one sonnets,
which tells the story of a young poet and architect at the time of the Arts
and Crafts movement. It is a tale of youthful idealism, love and friendship
erased by the orgy of self-harm we call the First World War. It has messages
for a generation facing climate change and further conflict.
'Urban Pastorals', a sequence of seven pieces of lyrical prose, looks at the
poet's South London childhood through the lens of pastoral poetry. They
evoke an Arcadia touched with irony.
Contents
Contents
I. URBAN PASTORALS
Piety 5 Tooting Bec Common 6 The English Gentleman 7 Miss Inkpen 8 At London Airport 9 Patience Escalier 11 Epilogue:The Citadel 12
II. THE GREAT MYSTERY
The Great Mystery 17
III. ARCHITECTURE
Obituary 23 Letter from the Champagne, 1916 24 Oxford 26 St Luke's College Chapel 27 The Canticles of St. Luke 28 Arthur Jacobs of Christ Church 29 The Long Vacation Tour 30 Ruth Jacobs 31 Nature Notes 33 Ivy-Leaved Toadflax 34 Aunt Esther 36 A Line from Keats 37 Ruth, in Her Journal 38 Adam Emparadised 39 Work 40 AVenetian Honeymoon 41 Madonna and Child 43 Arksdene Manor in theVale of Cleven 44 Et in Arcadia Ego 45 At Arksdene Manor 46 The Sleeping Giant 47 Heatwave 49 During a Heatwave 50
Prospects of War 51 The Cathedral Builders:A Dream 52 Ricochets 53 The Golden Treasury 54 Letter from the Trenches 55
IV.
The Reader 59 The Old Men at the Swimming-Pool 60 Robin Indoors 61 Industrial Village, Sheffield 62 Venice:Approaching San Polo 63 Bethel 64 The Visit 65 Report from Nowhere 66 Dawn Chorus 67
Notes 68
