(hardback: dust jacket included)

These poems have been collected from seven books. They are the work of a poet who has made his name without ever having been closely associated with any school or movement, and who has compared himself to a solitary prospector. ‘My claims,’ William Polmer has written, ‘have mostly lain in the borderland between pathos and satire, between the terrifying and the absurd.’ This territory has extended into three continents; it has its lyrical and sensual oases, and he has made it peculiarly his own.

Besides clarity and variety his poems show a strong sense of place, period and character, and a personal susceptibility to what is touching in human nature and ridiculous in human behaviour. The spirited and entertaining series of satirical ballads, intended to be read aloud and well known from public readings and broadcasts, caused The Times Literary Supplement to write, ‘One is tempted to believe that Mr. Polmer has done the most difficult, if not impossible thing, and created an entirely new type of ballad.’