POETRY: THE BASICS, Routledge, 2004.   Revised second edition 2011

The overriding aim of Poetry the Basics is to enhance the pleasure that readers gain from poetry. No special expertise is required to read and enjoy a poem, but, as with most pleasures, it can be greatly enriched by knowledge.

At the heart of the book are chapters on the most distinctively formal aspects of poetry: the different ‘voices’ of poetry, the poetic line both measured and ‘free’, rhyme, and stanza. Around these are chapters which attempt to associate poetry with wider language-use whilst establishing the special character of the ‘deliberate space’ that a poem occupies. The last chapter explores wider notions about the nature of poetic utterance, ‘inspiration’, and what it might be to be a poet.

The range is drawn from the Middle Ages to the present-day, and from poetry across the English-speaking world. Each chapter includes sustained discussion of individual poems as well as briefer examples.

ACCEPTABLE WORDS
Essays on the poetry of Geoffrey Hill
Manchester University Press, published December 2005, ISBN 0-7190-6754-5

Geoffrey Hill has said that some great poetry 'recognises that words fail us'. These essays explore Hill's struggle over fifty years with the recalcitrance of language. He is a poet of phenomenal verbal power who knows the dangers of indulging such power. His poetry draws to light the greatest intimacies and the most stunning and fleeting of his apprehensions. It is also public in its contemplation of ethics, history and politics. His ear for public discourse ranges from seventeenth century politics and theology to the nightly news and the celebrity-spread. This book seeks to show how all his work is marked by the quest for the right pitch of utterance whether it is sorrowing, angry, satiric or erotic. It shows how Hill's words are never lightly 'acceptable' but an ethical act, how he seeks out words he can stand by - words that are 'getting it right'.

Acceptable Words begins with an overview essay covering themes and styles across Hill's entire career, followed by a series of essays on the different volumes in chronological order of their first appearance up to Scenes from Comus (2005), concluding with a short 'Afterword'. The book also includes discussion of some poems yet to appear in book form.

This book is the most comprehensive and up-to-date critical work on Geoffrey Hill yet to appear. It aims to contribute something to the understanding of his poetry among those who have followed it for many years and students and other readers encountering this major poet for the first time.