I’ve been dipping into Ezra Pound again, moving from the Selected Poems edited and introduced by Eliot, which I devoured as a sixth former in the late sixties to the very useful New Selected Poems and Translations edited by Richard Sieburth. The selection from The Cantos in the latter brought me to Canto CXVI, which excited me enormously in the early seventies. I seem to remember seeing it cited as showing that Pound finally “got it” in the sense of feeling remorse at his role as Mussolini’s propagandist in the Second World War. I’m not sure about that, at least … Continue Reading

128 pp, £12.00, Bloodaxe Books Ltd, Eastburn, South Park, Hexham, Northumberland NE46 1BS

In Dharker’s last collection, Over the Moon, nearly all the poems were very specifically rooted in time and place. That concrete grounding gave them a great deal of their power. Luck Is the Hook works in a different way, making it both a departure from and a complement to the previous volume.

It’s essentially lyrical, concentrating on exploring emotions in themselves rather than their causes. One result is a smoother, more musical style. Another is the flowering of a mythical or fabulous mode. Over the Moon was dominated by … Continue Reading