Anvil Press Poetry
WelcomeFounded in 1968 by Peter Jay and now based in Greenwich, south-east London, Anvil Press is England’s longest-standing independent poetry publisher. We specialize in contemporary English poets – with a leavening of Irish and American – and in a range of translated poetry, from ancient classics to modern and contemporary poets. |
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December's featured books
The Christmas holiday is the perfect time to tackle those longer masterpieces one always meant to read. Dante’s The Divine Comedy might – be honest! – be one of them. Peter Dale’s version is as clear and fluent a version as you could wish.
Rilke has been everybody’s favourite German-language poet for a long time; Michael Hamburger’s selection from the miscellaneous poems written between 1912 and 1926 show a less familiar side to him than The Duino Elegies or Sonnets to Orpheus.
The poet and songwriter Nikos Gatsos’s Amorgos is a masterpiece of Greek surrealism, though that is probably the wrong term; in any case it is wonderful, mysterious and resonant poetry.
Finally, Gavin Bantock’s Just Think of It is a collection of thought-provoking and often provocative poems by a poet whose long sojourn in Japan gives him an unusual perspective, though many of his poems deal with his English childhood and youth.
These books have a 10% discount built into their displayed price.
Poem of the month
Dick Davis
A Christmas Poem
One of the oxen said
‘I know him, he is me – a beast
Of burden, used, abused,
Excluded from the feast –
A toiler, one by whom
No task will be refused:
I wish him strength, I give him room.’
One of the shepherds said
‘I know him, he is me – a man
Who wakes when others sleep,
Whose watchful eyes will scan
The drifted snow at night
Alert for the lost sheep:
I give this lamb, I wish him sight.’
One of the wise men said
‘I know him, he is me – a king
On wisdom’s pilgrimage,
One Plato claimed would bring
– The world back to its old
Unclouded golden age:
I wish him truth, I give him gold.’
Mary his mother said
‘I know his heart’s need, it is mine –
The chosen child who lives
Lost in his Lord’s design,
The self and symbol of
The selfless life he gives:
I give him life, I wish him love.’
Written for the 1982 Carol Service
of Nene College, Northampton
From The Covenant (1984) by Dick Davis
Our featured books
Nikos Gatsos: Amorgos
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Gavin Bantock: Just Think of It
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Dante: The Divine Comedy
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Rainer Maria Rilke: Turning-Point
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