A charming new collection of previously unpublished and uncollected poems by Sir John Betjeman.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.
By:
Sir John Betjeman
Edited by:
Kevin J. Gardner
Imprint: Continuum
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions:
Height: 142mm,
Width: 218mm,
Spine: 24mm
Weight: 368g
ISBN: 9781472966384
ISBN 10: 1472966384
Pages: 240
Publication Date: 03 September 2019
Audience:
General/trade
,
ELT Advanced
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
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
Sir John Betjeman was born in 1906 and educated at Marlborough and Magdalen College, Oxford. He gave his first radio talk in 1932; future appearances made him into a national celebrity. He was knighted in 1969 and appointed poet laureate in 1972. He died in 1984. Dr Kevin Gardner is Professor of English at Baylor University, USA. The author of many articles and books, he is the editor of Poems in the Porch, Building Jerusalem and Faith and Doubt of John Betjeman.
Reviews for Harvest Bells: New and Uncollected Poems by John Betjeman
Kevin J Gardner has dug up 80 or so lost or neglected poems from the archives, which show the full range of Betjeman's oeuvre over half a century * The Sunday Times * A marvellous gathering of hitherto hidden Betjeman, varied and surprising * Anthony Thwaite, poet and editor of Philip Larkin's 'Collected Poems' * The Betjeman music, but satire, fear and dissonance are its vivid companions * Peter Scupham, poet *
