Gavin Ewart’s first collection, Poems and Songs, appeared in 1939; his next, Londoners, didn’t appear until 1964. More than a dozen followed before his death in 1995.
(Thomas Hardy: The Woodlanders, end of Chapter XXXIV)
Deer Mister Fitzpiers
A’m writen to thee now to tell thee what may lie heavy on thy belly!
Yon hiair that Barber Percomb took that wer my hiair, by t’Holy Book, a zold it to’m – an’ all to deck proud Mistress Charmond’s hiead an’ neck!
Zo what thou...
Anybody can easily see that Auden is cleverer than me, and likewise Professor Dodds or even Joseph Brods- ky!
And the talents that the Fates...
Tattooed Thief Prowls Streets In Tony Neighbourhoods, Eludes Police for Years. American news item. All words in italics are quoted from this.
James, the yardman, was working out back, Maude, the maid, was tossing a salad – what better beginning, if you’re having a crack at writing a criminal ballad? And I do want to make it plain:Atlanta’s...
If you’re a man in a book by Beryl, believe me, you’re in very great peril! Unsure of purpose, weak and wobbly, or stern and strong, small bum, knees knobbly,
Accidental-On-Purpose Death before the end will stop your breath! You’ll find it’s a girl who’s the great Prime Mover when your Fate sucks you in like a ghastly Hoover.
Wolves are around in girl-sheep...
Open your mouths! Dinna keep them shut like a row of clams! But use them for shouting and for downing wee drams! For Stephen Hendry, the Pride of Scotland, has beaten that bounder, That horrible Thatcherite Sassenach wi’ a face like a flounder!
A more sophisticated version of Larkin’s cry ‘Foreign poetry? No!’ is the belief that the poetry of certain parts of the world (Eastern Europe, for example) is intrinsically...
Anthologies are coming from the publishers with the speed of Verey lights from a sinking ship. What could he better: six hundred pages of other men’s flowers, offering relief from what...
Towards the end of Gavin Ewart’s delightful and comfortable volume there is a poem called ‘It’s hard to dislike Ewart’. Too true, as Clive James or Peter Porter might say,...
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