Complete Poems

Basil Bunting (1900-1985) was one of the most important British poets of the 20th century. Acknowledged since the 1930s as a major figure in Modernist poetry, first by Pound and Zukofsky and later by younger writers, the Northumbrian master poet had to wait over 30 years before his genius was finally recognised in Britain – in 1966, with the publication of Briggflatts, which Cyril Connolly called ‘the finest long poem to have been published in England since T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets’. As well as Briggflatts, this edition includes Bunting’s other great Sonatas, most notably Villon (1925) and The Spoils (1951), along with his two books of Odes, his vividly realised ‘Overdrafts’ (as he called his free translations of Horace, Rudaki and others), and his brilliantly condensed Japanese adaptation, Chomei at Toyama (1932). It presents in its entirety Bunting’s own Collected Poems, with the addition of the posthumous Uncollected Poems and an introduction by Richard Caddel. Bunting wrote that ‘Poetry, like music, is to be heard.’ His own readings are essential listening for a full appreciation of his highly musical poetry. This enhanced ebook with audio draws on audio recordings of readings given by Bunting in Britain and the US during the 1960s and 1970s, with 50 audio files embedded with the texts of the poems, including all his major works. A separate enhanced ebook with audio and video of Briggflatts is also available from Bloodaxe, including two audio recordings of the poem from 1967 and 1977, a video of Peter Bell’s 1982 film portrait of Bunting, and additional background material. ‘Briggflatts is one of the few great poems of this century. It seems to me greater each time I read it.’ – Thom Gunn ‘His poems are the most important which have appeared in any form of the English language since T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land.’ – Hugh MacDiarmid