This new publication from Grey Suit Editions UK is now available in bookshops and from Ingram Publisher Services UK.

There is also a free Heyzine book brought out to accompany this printed publication. It is my collected ABSTRACTIONS

I have brought this out because I felt that my abstract writings including the long poem Love and Tears and the sequence Modern Sonnets were better kept together.

And here is a review by Jennifer Johnson that has come out in LONDON GRIP.

Collected Longer Poems
Anthony Howell
Grey Suit Editions
Paperback ISBN 978-1-903006-37-5
e-Book ISBN 978-1-903006-37-5
280pp	£20.00

Anthony Howell, 80, has a Wikipedia page showing his many achievements. He worked for the Royal Ballet before concentrating on writing poems, novels, plays and translations. He is also a visual artist, publisher and has run poetry events at The Room.

Howell’s Collected Longer Poems consists of 22 poems of varying lengths and styles written over 50 years; and they come with praises by Donald Gardner, Sylvia Kantaris, Robert Nye and John Ashberry. Regarding longer poems, Howell says, “the longer poem invites the reader to become immersed in the flow of a process and as such it is less dependent on that lyrical emphasis on beginnings and ends – which may seem to lend significance to a fragment or an anecdote”. While I cannot do justice to this major collection in a short review I will make a few observations. Hopefully, the illustrative lines I quote will show the range of Howell’s writing.

Several of Howell’s poems tend toward a maximalist style with much detail. According to Auerbach in his book Mimesis, this foregrounding of detail is more characteristic of classical writing than that of the biblical tradition. Following the former tradition is perhaps unsurprising for someone who has received critical acclaim for his versions of poems by the Latin poet Statius. Statius appears in ‘Dancers in Daylight’, “looking up in awe/At rafters there no longer.” Howell has also been influenced by the abstract poet John Ashberry whose poetry puts the emphasis on language rather than meaning. We are told that “Ashberry approves of the results” of Howell’s version of Fawzi Karim’s ‘Empyrean Suite – Poems from the Afterlife’. Howell describes his own technique as “description without motive” with the emphasis on detailed description rather than narrative meaning.

Let us look at the beginning of ‘Boxing the Cleveland’.

A coach-built lorry, several metres long,
Is backing down the grass-bound lane between
The weather-boarded shack where clothes are hung
And that old shed for wood. The lane leads on

Past chicken runs behind a criss-cross fence
On the woodshed side, beyond the much-decayed
Remains of a kennel, overgrown with dense
Nettles and docks, and then on past those frayed

Rails the horses gnaw through the winter, bordering
The sunset paddock, there on the laundry side.

Notice also how each line begins with an initial capital. Howell’s reason for doing this can be found in an article he wrote for The High Window.

One of the poets Ashberry admired was F.T. Prince and, in the poem ‘The Ballad of the Sands’, Howell follows a verse form pioneered by F.T. Prince which uses a six-line stanza with two rhymes and two unrhymed lines. As Howell says, “the form mediates admirably between stricture and freedom.” The following stanza shows Howell’s skill in formal writing.

Her footprints are soon
Smoothed over by the wind
And you lose their descent
In some crater of the dune
Where the shades crescent
Enlarges afternoon.

Some of Howell’s poems are meditations such as the ‘Songs of Realisation’. Here is an extract.

But what fills space, if anything? Emptiness I disown.
I sit beneath the fig, look upwards at the sun,
Gazing through a leaf as I turn brown.
From some other view, the leaf is simply green;
From underneath, a filigree of tributaries, a delta flooding
Backwards on itself, feeding on light while drinking moisture.

The disowning of emptiness shows Howell’s original mind. But seeing things from different perspectives – which Howell often does – can have a certain danger. In ‘Heron of Hawthornden’ he writes wittily

It’s my fault. Haven’t the sense to keep
My mouth shut. Cultural ladies and gents
Like nothing better than to bathe together in agreement’s
Glow.

More wit can be found in his versions of Fawzi Karim’s ‘Empyrean Suite: Poems from the Afterlife’

Basil sat by my grave today,
           reading me my poems.
I must say it was difficult to hear,
Being far above, rather than below and near.
He then began to write himself.

While the title of Howell’s poem ‘My Part in the Downfall of Everything: A Satire on Deceit’ is witty the subject of the satire is grim as the following stanzas show.

My Jewish ‘Opa’ cooled his hands
In an anteroom as General Goering addressed
The rest of a Zionist delegation.
Brandishing a wad of clippings, Goering
Launched into a harsh denunciation

Of those among the populace responsible
For spreading anti-Nazi propaganda
In Britain and America – gross exaggerations,
Detailing atrocities that constituted
Fabrications. ‘Put a stop to these

Libellously false reports immediately
Or I shall not be able (or inclined)
To guarantee the safety of the Jews.’

Opa means grandfather. Howell’s interest in the bleak may be suggested by the last line of ‘The Photographer’, ‘Then for something utterly ugly makes for the perfect shot’. The following lines in ‘A walker on the wall’ give a visual description of everyday ugliness.

Broken, where the wall surveys the sea,
And left as flotsam shored against its mound,
Lie jerry-cans, the torn hoods off prams
And ruptured tires distorted by their scorching:

The poem ‘Silent Highway’ about the history and mythology of the Thames begins with a description of what would normally be seen as ugly in a celebratory tone.

1. Heraclitus

Apotheosis! Arsenals of the sky
Ablaze, exploding, crimsoning the crowns
Of storm clouds over Woolwich with its furnaces
Producing the great barrels of our guns.

Throughout the book are many references to poets of the past and adaptations of famous lines. One example also comes from ‘Silent Highway’, this time in the ‘Windrush’ section.

Sweet Thames, run softly, till me end I song,
Me quit the West Indies and the journey be long.

This adaptation of a line by Spenser and borrowed by Eliot introduces the speech of newcomers.

I would highly recommend Collected Longer Poems because Howell, through his skilful and wide-ranging writing, shares with the reader his considerable knowledge and original way of seeing the world.