New and Selected Poems

Fred Beake has been writing since the late Sixties, and this New and Selected provides a much needed overview of a constantly developing body of work. About a third of the book is given over to the very fresh and colourful poems that have been written since he moved to South Devon in 2003. Beake has maintained an interest throughout his career in the short, often very visual lyric; but has also written offbeat fictions around particular characters, and very musical longer pieces such as 'Marona' and 'Towards the West' that reflect (if at a distance) the poet's early interest in the French Surrealists. This is an unusual poetry, and hard to place in terms of the modern scene. It occupies a position that is equidistant between the Imagists and Objectivists, the Surrealists, and much older things.