ISBN: 978-0-86140-206-9

This volume, the first full collection of Francis Warner’s poems for more than twenty years, confirmed his position as a master of lyric form, and also made possible a deeper awareness of the consistency of his development, and the range of his poetic achievement.

Collected Poems contains sonnets in every classical form – also sonnets reversed, inside-out, upside-down, ends-to-middle, with centre-rhyme, boot-lace rhyme, in two voices, acrostic, double acrostic. . . . Far from being merely a cascade of virtuosity, they are filled with deep emotion and rich experience, as well as being precisely made: modifications of the form grown from the pressure and directions of the emotions. The ‘dark’ sonnets are here (this time along with more than fifty others), but these now can be seen set in their original context, the sequence Experimental Sonnets – a book about which much has been written, on account of its technical innovations and its range of feeling, but the full text of which had been unavailable for twenty years.

In addition to such longer poems as his classical evocation Perennia, and over one hundred lyrics brought together for the first time, there are songs from ten plays.

‘Some of the most rewarding and individual poetry of the last quarter century.’ Glyn Pursglove in Francis Warner’s Poetry (1988)

xii, 108pp., 28.5 x 18.7 cm.   1997

To mark the first twenty years as Francis Warner's publisher, years which included our publication of thirteen books by him (as well as a number of books about his work), and to mark his sixtieth birthday Colin Smythe Ltd. published this volume containing poems written since those published in Collected Poems 1960-1984, together with lyrics from his recent plays.

This book, Nightingales: Poems 1985-1996, is designed by Michael Mitchell, set in Lutetia Italic type, and printed in three colours throughout and embellished with real gold-leaf motifs in a limited edition of 500 signed and numbered copies on mould-made Velin Arches rag paper by the Libanus Press, Marlborough. It is bound by Brian Settle of Smith Settle, Otley, in quarter vellum with boards covered by paste paper made by Victoria Hall of Norwich.

The Libanus Press was founded by designer and printer Michael Mitchell thirty years ago. Working together with two highly-skilled journeymen, compositor and printer, the Press reflects all the splendid qualities of such presses as William Morris's Kelmscott Press and St John Hornby's Ashendene Press. It uses three relief presses and has maintained one of the few remaining type foundries in the country allowing it to produce high quality type for each individual work. Its range and knowledge of the world's best handmade papers gives it the broadest experience of print on the most interesting and beautiful materials, and has persevered with nearly lost techniques, such as the printed application of gold leaf used in the present volume. Numbered amongst the books produced by the Press in the past have been a series of dual text publications - a new translation of Plato's Symposium that is now the contemporary benchmark, Voltaire's Candide, The Letters of Pietro Bembo to Lucrezia Borgia and Extracts from War and Peace - Greek, French, Italian and Russian, giving it unparalleled editorial and design expertise with texts.

‘What a triumphant harvest!’
Dr George Rylands, King’s College,Cambridge

‘A sumptuous treat. It is good to have an unashamedly lyric poet of such talent.’
The Bishop of Oxford

Edited by Robin Skelton

ISBN: 978-0-86140-058-4

xxxvi, 128 pp. 21.4 cm.

J.M.Synge died in 1909 and The Works of John M. Synge were published in four volumes by Maunsel & Co., Dublin, in 1910. Since that time, with the exception of a few minor verses and one or two fragments of prose, the canon of his work has remained unaltered. Nevertheless, much unpublished material exists, for the most part of great interest and significance for the understanding of Synge's methods of work and development. This material, including early drafts of the plays, notebooks, poems, and fragments of poetic drama, has now been thoroughly explored in order to create this definitive edition, first published by Oxford University Press 1962-68, which not only collects together all that is of significance in his printed and in his unprinted work, but also, by a careful use of worksheets and early drafts, indicates much of the process of creation which occurred before the production of the printed page.

The Collected Works is in four volumes, under the general editorship of the late Professor Robin Skelton, of the University of Victoria, British Columbia, who begins the series with his edition of the poems and translations, in which he has more than doubled the canon of Synge's verse. The prefaces by W. B. Yeats and Synge to the first, Cuala Press, edition are also included. The late Dr Alan Price, of The Queen's University, Belfast, edited the prose and Professor Ann Saddlemyer of Victoria College, University of Toronto, has edited the plays, published in two volumes. These volumes were published by arrangement with Oxford University Press.

54pp. 20.4 cm

The poems in this collection swing in mood from darkly serious to rather lighter tones, the emphasis being on reactions both to what is observed physically, and to associations aroused by single words or ideas. These can be extreme, as with 'Inside Belsen' or 'Brimstone'. Sometimes, as with 'John Lindley Has Died', a news story in a magazine can provoke an emotional response, as the mind attempts to come to terms with what the announcement has evoked.