Martin Bell: Complete Poems

Bell, Martin; Porter, Peter (ed.)

ISBN 10: 1852240431 / ISBN 13: 9781852240431

Published by Bloodaxe Books, Newcastle upon Tyne, 1988

About this Item

Paperback. Very good condition. From the collection of poet Gavin Ewart. Signed and dedicated by editor Peter Porter to Ewart. A couple of creases down spine. RB.

Seller Inventory # 505720

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Martin Bell: Complete Poems
• Publisher: Bloodaxe Books, Newcastle upon Tyne
• Publication Date: 1988
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1852240431
• ISBN 13: 9781852240431
• Binding: Paperback
• Condition: Very Good
• Signed: Signed and Dedicated By Editor
• Book Type: Used
• Seller catalogs:
  • Poetry

About this title

Synopsis

Born in Hampshire in 1918, Martin Bell was the leading member of the 'lost generation' of English poets whose careers were interrupted by the War. He was a prominent member of The Group during the fifties, and a major influence on younger poets like Peter Redgrove and Peter Porter.

His poetry reached a wide audience during the sixties through Penguin Modern Poets, and in 1967 he published his Collected Poems,1937-1966, his first and last book. Bell was also a champion and brilliant translator of French Surrealist poets. He died in poverty in Leeds in 1978.

Like other "provincial" working-class contemporaries, Bell wrote fantastical, highly erudite, biting, belligerent poetry. And yet – as Philip Hobsbaum said – he also wrote 'some of the most delicate love poems of our time' as well as 'one of the major war poems in the language'. A. Alvarez called him 'an emotional tightrope walker... He writes a rather bitter, tensely colloquial verse based, it seems, on a radical dislike for both himself and pretty much everything else.'

'The publication of Martin Bell's Collected Poems is as important a literary event as any not merely this year but in this decade.' – Anthony Burgess

'Martin Bell is one of the major poets writing in English in the second half of the century.' – Peter Porter

‘The poems glitter with laughter and desire. […] There is, it is true, self-hatred and self-mockery but they are part of a comedy that comprises terrors left over from the war and mischief aimed at the controllers of life: headmasters, mayors, all the snobbishly high-minded. […] "Winter Coming On", subtitled "A caricature from Laforgue" [is] a magnificent poem in which Bell turns Jules Laforge into a heartbreakingly yearning opera buff. Together with Larkin's own "The Whitsunn Weddings" it is one of the two great poems of post-war England, not written from Larkin's train but by a demob from the platform, the B&B and the park bench. I always return to him [Martin Bell]. To him and Eliot. There hasn’t been anyone like Bell since.’ – George Szirtes, The Independent

About the Author

Martin Bell was born in Hampshire in 1918. He was the leading member of the 'lost generation' of English poets whose careers were interrupted by the Second World War. He was a prominent member of The Group during the 1950s, and a major influence on younger poets like Peter Redgrove and Peter Porter. His poetry reached a wide audience during the 60s through Penguin Modern Poets, and in 1967 he published his Collected Poems,1937-1966, his first and last book. He died in poverty in Leeds in 1978. Bell was also a champion and brilliant translator of French Surrealist poets. An edition of his translations of Robert Desnos, A la Mystérieuse / Les Ténèbres, was published in 2018 by Art Translated with a foreword by Karl O'Hanlon. Bell's Complete Poems, edited by Peter Porter, was first published by Bloodaxe in 1988.