The Making of Poetry

Praise for The Making of Poetry `Dazzling ... Before I read this book I was something of a Wordswortho-sceptic. But Nicolson is one of the most persuasive advocates of his genius I have read. The Making of Poetry brings the poetry to life, but also the countryside ... It has paid off brilliantly. He is helped along by Tom Hammick's beautiful illustrations.' The Times `The perfect marriage of poetry and place ... Nicolson, in the footsteps of Wordsworth, comes with his own Coleridge, the prodigiously gifted and colourful artist Tom Hammick, whose dreamy woodcuts and paintings are scattered through the narrative .... A memorable triptych of the two poets and their Dolly in nonstop discussion about nature, art and life itself ... Poetry and place are perfectly braided together in prose whose biographical mood pays tribute to Richard Holmes and whose topographical fervour evokes Robert Macfarlane.' Observer `Adam Nicolson takes us deeper into this extraordinary time and place, and these explosive young minds, than ever before in his captivating book ... It is intensely moving and thrilling.' Evening Standard `A fabulous book! Passionate, original, intensely personal, and thrillingly observant ... It will have terrific impact. The combination of Nicolson's fine nature writing through all the seasons, with his revealing use of local sources, and his own exquisite/patient close reading of the poets' notebooks is completely captivating. It is also truly moving. Above all, he is fascinating on the central relationship between Coleridge and Wordsworth, the dark depths and emerging complications of that friendship: the rivalries and creative tensions it always contained, and the final sense of Wordsworth striding on alone into the Wye Valley.' Richard Holmes