Lee Harwood New Collected Poems launched and on sale now

The New Collected Poems of Lee Harwood is NOW available. HERE:  Lee Harwood - New Collected Poems (shearsman.com)

 

We launched it, a cast of thousands. Like all Shearsman launches, it was held in the Swedenborg Centre in Central London. In this case, on 10^th January, 2023…

Kelvin Corcoran invited a number of poets and publishers and poetry friends to read their favourite Harwood poem(s) – I was going to add ‘from the book’, though there are some poems in the book that nobody had seen!). (See here for more on that: Pages: Lee Harwood New Collected Poems (2023) Some of the new things we found to put in it (robertsheppard.blogspot.com)). Indeed, I told the audience about the new goodies we'd found as Kelvin and I edited the volume and the restoration of poems had Lee removed (at various points, as we discovered.)

It was a well-attended affair with lots of people I hadn't seen for years, even decades. Michael Zand (one of those I'd not seen for years) said it was the kind of event that people definitely will remember for a long time. Our readers were 

Andy Brown

Ian Davidson

Carrie Etter

Rafe Harwood

Ric Hool

Maria Jastrzębska 

Tony Lopez

John Muckle

Frances Presley (also reading a poem chosen by

Gavin Selerie who couldn't be present)

Elaine Randell

Peter Robinson

Iain Sinclair

Frank Skinner

Simon Smith (and)

Janet Sutherland

Each reader brought something unique to the poems. Iain Sinclair commented on the charm of the reading by Lee's son, Rafe, so it seems appropriate to represent the evening with a photo of him reading. (If you are wondering, the Frank Skinner is the comedian, but he is also a poetry podcaster, and read Lee's 'One, Two, Three' well.) Thank you, all of you. Your spirit of generosity was palpable.   

Iain also made an interesting remark. He said he keeps Lee's books in Hastings, because they read differently  - the poems themselves change, beside the sea. I so want this to be true, but is this possible?  

If you would like to hear Lee read his own poems, this link includes a load of Harwood audio/video for you to enjoy: Pages: Lee Harwood New Collected Poems: the best audio and video recordings (robertsheppard.blogspot.com)

Here's a Harwood hub-post, that links to the many Harwood materials on this blog, including a review of the 2004 Collected Poems which this new book replaces: Pages: Lee Harwood: 4 Poems (and a note on them) in Abandoned Playground, ahead of NEW COLLECTED POEMS edited Corcoran and Sheppard (robertsheppard.blogspot.com). 

A view of the book from the back! It's around 800 pages long by the way, a veritable brick of a volume.

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Locating Robert Sheppard: email: robertsheppard39@gmail.com  website: www.robertsheppard.weebly.com Follow on Twitter: Robert Sheppard (@microbius) / Twitter  latest blogpost: www.robertsheppard.blogspot.com