JH Prynne Poems 2016-2024 reviewed in The Guardian
‘While one might have expected an update of Prynne’s already monumental Poems, the arrival of more than 700 pages of new work is a remarkable turn of events.’ – David Wheatley, The Guardian (Best recent poetry round-up)
JH Prynne is Britain’s leading late Modernist poet. His austere yet playful poetry challenges our sense of the world, not by any direct address to the reader but by showing everything in a different light, enacting slips and changes of meaning through shifting language. When his Poems was first published in 1999, it was immediately acclaimed as a landmark in modern poetry. Four further collections were added to the second edition of Poems in 2005, followed by a further seven along with a group of uncollected poems to the third edition of Poems (2015).
The decade since Poems (2015) has been the most productive period of Prynne's life, with over thirty limited editions published between 2017 and 2023. To have added these to a fourth edition of Poems would have doubled the size of that volume. Poems 2016–2024 is therefore a separate, supplementary edition of his later work, including, except for minor corrections, the mostly unchanged contents of 36 texts written since Poems (2015).
Poems: 2016-2024 will be published by Bloodaxe in hardback and paperback editions on 27 June 2024. It will be available to buy via the Bloodaxe website from the beginning of June. In the meantime, it's available to pre-order via Bookshop.org here.
PRE-PUBLICATION REVIEW IN THE GUARDIAN
The Guardian, Best recent poetry round-up, Saturday 4 May 2024
David Wheatley reviewed JH Prynne’s Poems: 2016-2024 in his best recent poetry round-up for May. This appeared online on 3 May and in print in The Guardian’s Saturday magazine on 4 May ahead of the book’s publication on 27 June.
‘While one might have expected an update of Prynne’s already monumental Poems, the arrival of more than 700 pages of new work is a remarkable turn of events […] Here is a book to keep us busy for a very long time.’ – David Wheatley, The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2024/may/03/the-best-recent-poetry-review-roundup
David Wheatley's in-depth review of JH Prynne’s Poems (Third Edition) was featured in The Guardian in May 2015. Still available online.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/may/08/poems-jh-prynne-review
[03 May 2024]
