Desire Lines: Unselected Poems 1966-2000 (Paperback or Softback)

Desire Lines: Unselected Poems, 1966-2000 presents work drawn from across MacSweeney's writing life. Beginning with The Boy From the Green Cabaret Tells of His Mother, which brought the 20-year-old poet fame and notoriety, Desire Lines brings more than 300 pages of MacSweeney's poetry back into print. His prolific 1970s are represented here by eight complete sequences, including the major political work Black Torch and the previously unpublished long poems Toad Church and Pelt Feather Log. Drawing on archival resources and extensive bibliographic resources, Desire Lines collects the majority of MacSweeney's poetry not included in Wolf Tongue: Selected Poems, 1965-2000. These unselected poems showcase the full range of his capabilities: from raw lyrical emotion to modernist fragmentation, from historical narrative to surreal invention and absurd humour. Including five unpublished poems from the 1980s - including the "State-of-the-Nation Bulletin", Revulsion and the tender, heartbroken 'Soft Hail' - MacSweeney's essential contribution to modern poetry can be seen to its full extent. Alongside translations from the French of Guillaume Apollinaire, Desire Lines includes an introduction and notes on the texts by the editor.

Barry MacSweeney (1948-2000) was a poet, journalist, trade unionist and publisher. A pivotal figure in the experimental poetry scene of the 1960s and 1970s, he achieved widespread critical acclaim towards the end of his life. A selected poems, Wolf Tongue, was published posthumously by Bloodaxe in 2003, and he has been the subject of a full-length academic study, a book of critical essays, and several radio documentaries.

Luke Roberts is Lecturer in Modern Poetry at King's College, London, a position he has held since 2016. Among other publications he has authored 'Barry MacSweeney and the Politics of Post-War British Poetry: Seditious Things' (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017) and co-edited 'Certain Prose of the English Intelligencer' (Mountain 2012; 2014).