Collected Poems

Collected Poems

Summary

John Fuller is one of the most accomplished, prolific and popular of contemporary poets. His Collected Poems brings together most of his poems, from his first collection, Fairground Music (1961) to Stones and Fires (winner of the 1996 Forward Poetry Prize), and enables us to appreciate the full extent of his remarkable talents. From his strikingly assured early poems - dramatic monologues and playful rewritings of myth and fairytale - to his more complex, discursive later work, Fuller displays his virtuosity with a wide variety of subjects, moods and forms.

Here are fantasies, poems about nature, riddles and nonsense poems; tender love poems and philosophical meditations; sombre, wistful sonnets and the lightest, most charming songs. But there are consistent themes: romantic love, a potent sense of the physical world, and a constant shifting between exuberant irreverence and the yearning for moral and metaphysical truths. Throughout, the poems are steeped in humour and learning, and display Fuller's easy command of the of the whole scope and richness of the English language.

Reviews

  • For a large number of writers... the decisive influence
    James Fenton

About the author

John Fuller

John Fuller, born in Ashford, Kent, is an acclaimed poet and novelist. His collection Stones and Fires (1996) was awarded the Forward Prize; Ghosts (2004) was shortlisted for the Whitbread Award for Poetry; The Space of Joy (2006) was shortlisted for the Costa Poetry Award, and The Grey Among the Green (1988), Song & Dance (2008) and Pebble & I (2010) were all Poetry Book Society Recommendations. His 1983 novel Flying to Nowhere won the Whitbread First Novel Award and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. He has also written collections of short stories and several books for children. He is an Emeritus Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford.
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