Awards

• Winner of European Poetry Prize 2008

Overview

Alan Sillitoe (1928-2010) was an award-winning poet and one of the leading British novelists of the twentieth century. He wrote more than fifty books, establishing an enduring critical and popular success with his 1958 novel Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, which set a new direction in writing about the reality of working-class lives in post-war Britain. His stories of working-class life earned him a reputation as one of the ""angry young men"" of a new generation of writers. His poetry, however, revealed his own inner life in a way that he found impossible to do in fiction. Presented here are Sillitoe's poems that present the world as he saw it. Using a storyteller's skill, he brought to life the people and places that captured his imagination and took him on a search for meaning. Fascist graffiti scrawled by an unseen hand on a wall in Irkutsk, three sons standing in silence by the grave of their father--this is Sillitoe's world as seen with his poet's eye, a vision that is at the same time clear and precise, politically engaged, fiercely intelligent, and deeply personal. Drawn from his eight volumes of poetry, this selection has been chosen by his wife, the poet Ruth Fainlight.

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Table of Contents

Reviews

""The poems of a well-travelled man, a reader of maps in many senses, who ranged widely, restlessly, in his life and in his mind; poems that, whether brief lyric or extended parable, all speak to Alan Sillitoe's flintily individual grasp of the world, in all his voices, authentic, humorous, sardonic and compassionate."" Alan Jenkins; ""It is when he engages the novelist's eye for incident that he is most successful. ""Car fights Cat"" relates how a cat faced down a Daimler, tumbled beneath its wheels, then ""shot out with limbs still solid, / Bolted, spitting fire and gravel / At unjust God who built such massive / Catproof motorcars in his graven image"". There is a fine poem about a map of the Somme (one of several war-related pieces) and there are some welcome lighter moments in different voices - the rather brilliant duologue ""Full Moon's Tongue"" and the jaunty monologue ""Derelict Bathing Cabins at Seaford"".""; John Greening, The TLS, May 15, 2020

The poems of a well-travelled man, a reader of maps in many senses, who ranged widely, restlessly, in his life and in his mind; poems that, whether brief lyric or extended parable, all speak to Alan Sillitoe's flintily individual grasp of the world, in all his voices, authentic, humorous, sardonic and compassionate. Alan Jenkins; It is when he engages the novelist's eye for incident that he is most successful. Car fights Cat relates how a cat faced down a Daimler, tumbled beneath its wheels, then shot out with limbs still solid, / Bolted, spitting fire and gravel / At unjust God who built such massive / Catproof motorcars in his graven image . There is a fine poem about a map of the Somme (one of several war-related pieces) and there are some welcome lighter moments in different voices - the rather brilliant duologue Full Moon's Tongue and the jaunty monologue Derelict Bathing Cabins at Seaford . ; John Greening, The TLS, May 15, 2020

Author Information

Alan Sillitoe (1928-2010) was an English writer and poet known for his depictions of working-class life. His novels include Saturday Night and Sunday Morning and The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner. Ruth Fainlight is one of Britain's foremost poets. She has published more than sixteen books of poetry, including New and Collected Poems and Somewhere Else Entirely. She was married to Alan Sillitoe for over fifty years.

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