Yes, I second all of that. My poetry arguments with Peter are to do with some of his opinions but because I rate his poetry so highly it makes any difference in opinion about poetry all that pressing.

Cheers

Tim

  

On 17 Nov 2018, at 08:57, Chris Ozzard wrote:

Dear Peter,

Forthright
Umbilical 
Chastened
Knots

'
Exterminate
Moloch!

I just want to reassure you that you are in my opinion one of the finest poets of your generation still active today in the UK.

Your 'Strange Family' (12 songs) published by Rosemary Waldrop in 1968 I still treasure. I own number 88 of the 250 copies. Without its soliloquies, and earthing parodic imitation of Prynnne's 'day light songs' led to JH' s oeuvre, it's bathic in intensity.

Your 'Ospita' when in the altruism of Thatcherism was published in the 'new british poetry' in 1988 became a game changing experience for me as young writer and editor.  These ludic sonnets are rhapsodies on the human threshold of pain, their fluidity in mannerist foils are deeply sarcastic it took me years to absorb. They tend to the meditation on harm.

My copy of Passing Measures is well worn having been carried on numerous walks to read and quiet my agrophobia. I adore your Sea Watches, which for me have brought solace in the deepest moments of ill health and are some of the most beautiful poems written in Wales. Their absence from Goodby & Davies' s definitive anthology The Edge of Necessary is a blunder.

And from 'Alstonefield: a poem' "Red flicker where things leave us, white blades / where they advance." "Poetry occupies it's moment completely, like heroin, it is deeply convincing, but does it know the truth?"

I love your work ... thank you Peter...

Chris Ozzard 

---

To unsubscribe from the BRITISH-IRISH-POETS list, click the following link:
https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?SUBED1=BRITISH-IRISH-POETS&A=1