Collected Poems, by Sydney Clouts (used)

The publication of the Collected Poems of Sydney Clouts (1926-1982) will prove a landmark in the history of South African poetry. In addition to the forty-five poems of One Life (which appeared in 1966, and in 1968 won both the Ingrid Joker and Olive Schreiner prizes), it presents almost one hundred more, seventy-two for the first time. It is among the most impressive single volumes of verse to be published in South Africa.

Anthony Delius has rightly called Clouts our most original poet. He is a master of an extraordinary range of technique, tone, mood and subject matter: love poems; seascapes and rocky coastlines; miraculous animals, figures in rural settings, in cities, at sea; lyric, lament, satire, prophecy, celebration.

He will have nothing to do with the stock response or the well-worn route. A poem is a new beginning, a metrical foray or journey in which each device is justified by a unique event: 'everything is first'. His aim is not to excite, or anger, or soothe, but to reveal, to entice us to experience with him flashpoints of heightened awareness.

The editors, the poet's wife Marjorie Clouts and his brother Cyril Clouts, have been uniquely able to bring insight to the organisation of the body of poetry left by the poet when he died in 1982. They acknowledge, too, in their Preface, their debt to the editorial guidance and advice of Ruth Harnett and Guy Butler, of Rhodes University, Grahamstown. 

condition: very good