The Men Around Her Bed - Softcover

Brownjohn, Alan

Softcover

ISBN 10: 190463401X ISBN 13: 9781904634010

Publisher: Enitharmon Press, 2004

Synopsis

In The Men Around Her Bed, Alan Brownjohn writes about experiences from childhood (the memory of hearing Neville Chamberlain’s 1939 declaration of war) on into the present, sometimes in precisely dated poems. He is perennially concerned with the impact of momentous events and changes on day-to-day life; his acute sense of detail recently earned him the soubriquet, in the TLS, of the doyen of the diurnal’. In this new collection, he juxtaposes religious belief and unbelief, transmutes quirky social observation into poetry, indulges jokes and fantasies, and praises or commemorates friends. The poem which provides the title of the collection is an unconventional and mysterious celebration of his life; for which, in the words of Sean O’Brien, his poetry shows an undiminished appetite’.

About this title

About the Author:

Poet Alan Brownjohn was born in London on 28 July 1931 and was educated at Merton College, Oxford. He worked as a schoolteacher between 1957 and 1965 and lectured at Battersea College of Education and South Bank Polytechnic until he left to become a full-time freelance writer in 1979. A regular broadcaster, reviewer and contributor to journals including the Times Literary Supplement, Encounter and the Sunday Times, Alan Brownjohn was poetry critic for the New Statesman and was Chairman of the Poetry Society between 1982 and 1988. He has also served on the Arts Council literature panel, was a Labour councillor and a candidate for Parliament. His first collection of poetry, The Railings, was published in 1961. Other poetry books include Collected Poems 1952-1983 (1983, re-issued in 1988) and The Observation Car (1990). He is also the author of three novels, The Way You Tell Them: A Yarn of the Nineties (1990), The Long Shadows (1997) and A Funny Old Year (2001), as well as two books for children and a critical study of the poet Philip Larkin. His novel Windows on the Moon was published in 2009. His latest poetry collection Ludbrooke & Others was published by Enitharmon in July 2010. Alan received the Writers' Guild's Lifetime Achievement Award in 2007.

Review:

'A powerful range and depth' Malcolm Bradbury'A completely assured master of whatever form he adopts' Peter Porter'Regular forms and tones flow as if naturally' Philip Gross

About this edition

• Publisher: Enitharmon Press
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 190463401X
• ISBN 13: 9781904634010
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 64