This edition draws on all the poetry titles listed in the bibliography, including all the poems from Ken Smith’s two previous retrospectives, The Poet Reclining: Selected Poems 1962-1980 (Bloodaxe Books, 1982) and Shed: Poems 1980-2001 (Bloodaxe Books, 2002), the latter including all the poetry which he wished to keep in print from that period, from his Bloodaxe collections Burned Books (1981), Abel Baker Charlie Delta Epic Sonnets (1981), Terra (1986), Wormwood (1987), The heart, the border (1990), Tender to the Queen of Spain (1993) and Wild Root (1998), together with a new collection, Shed (2001).
Fast forward was commissioned and broadcast for the 2001 Poetry Proms by BBC Radio 3, while Wall dreams and The other shadow were commissioned and broadcast by BBC Radio 4 and Radio 3. Hungarian quartet, The other shadow, The Shadow of God and Wire through the heart were published in book form by Ister (Budapest), together with a CD of the BBC programmes of the last three poem sequences.
The eponymous painting referred to in ‘Countryside around Dixon Manor’ hangs in the Cheltenham City Art Gallery; the verse prefix in the poem is from Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry by Tusser Thomas (OUP). Ken Smith acknowledged the chapter on Sir John Hawkwood in Geoffrey Trease’s The Condottiere for his Hawkwood sequence, and Andrew Wheatcroft’s The Ottomans for the prologue to The Shadow of God, which is the content of a letter sent by Suleyman the Magnificent to the King of France, proposing an alliance.
The poems from Work, distances / poems (Swallow Press, Chicago, 1972) in Collected Poems are included in their original order but with later revised texts or revised titles taken from The Poet Reclining in some cases, and with some other poems from the same period added where they appear in the selection he made for The Poet Reclining.
The publication history of Ken Smith’s later work included in Shed is well documented in the bibliography. However, The Poet Reclining included poems drawn from a variety of small press publications in the US and UK, some of these appearing in more than one previous title, marked in the following list with an asterisk*:
Eleven Poems: Family group*; Grass*; The pity*.
The Pity: Family group*; The street; Country: Keld to Reeth; Grass*; The pity*; The hunter; Water; A fragment.
Academic Board Poems: The boss*.
Arc Pamphlets 4 & 5: The child’s version*; The son; Gravedigger; Bitter*.
Work, distances/poems: Exiles; Dream journeys; She speaks; The child’s version*; The boss*; Bitter*; Where winter begins; In Pennsylvania, winter’s end; After a journey; Little Notes; Persistent narrative; Crying woman; Song for the whites; From the Nahua; The Sioux cleared from Minnesota; Ghost songs; Ghost dances; Where did I learn such quiet [as Untitled]. The Wild Turkey [as Calling the Wild Turkey]: Wild Turkey One; Wild Turkey Two; Living in the Danelaw [as The Danelaw]; Another part of his childhood; A description of the lichway; Wild Turkey Six; A farewell to the city of Exeter; In the Americas, so the tale goes; The author, a teacher of petomania; A journey through part of western Pennsylvania. The Eli poems [as The dead orchestra]: The marsh; The third month; Eli’s poem; The rooming house; His lament; The obsession; What was done.
Hawk Wolf: Wolf vision; Hawk vision.
Wasichi: Valley*; The clearing.
Tristan Crazy: One for sorrow; Two for nobody; Three: tales of the hunter*; Four, being a prayer to the western wind*; Five, which is here by the river; Six: the wife’s complaint; Seven: when he can’t sleep for thinking; Eight. The singer; Nine: Shorty’s advice to the players*; Ten: the tale unfinished*.
Tales of the Hunter: Tales of Urias the shape-shifter; Old postcards of the river; The Swan; Reports from the east; From the southern river; At the western beacon, the second of the songs of Urias [as Among the dancers, being the second of the songs of Urias]; Tristan Crazy three [as Tales of the Hunter]*, four [as The fourth song of Urias, a prayer to the western wind]*, nine [as Shorty’s advice to the players]*, and ten [as The message]*.
What I’m Doing Now: Playing field observations; Caesar Caesar; A right curse on the enemy; Spartan communiqué; From the vale of White Horse; Being the third song of Urias [as ‘Lives ago…’]; In transit; Huneus the shoemaker; Operations undertaken at or near the surface; Transcription of the crying woman; Planting aloes; Mouth; Tongue.
Fox Running: This was revised and extended from its first printing with Rolling Moss Press in 1980 to the 1981 and 1982 Bloodaxe texts.
Between the Dancers: Moiré effect*.
Grainy pictures of the rain: My father fading out; Valley*; Childhood in the lowlands; Sunk Island, that winter; The Tivoli Bar; Federico; Maria the thief; The veterans; Peasant; Duck at Haldon Ponds; Moiré effect*.
Uncollected poems: these poems appeared in the following magazines and anthologies: Boston Phoenix, ‘Remembering when he was a wolf; London Magazine, ‘Old business: the drowned bride’; New Poems 1972-73, ed. Douglas Dunn (PEN/Hutchinson, 1973), ‘To survive’; Not Poetry, ‘Six items heard in three locations’, ‘At the college des beaux arts’, and ‘Some unfinished movements’; Perfect Bound, ‘Fun City Winter’ sequence; Poems for Shakespeare 4, ed. Anthony Rudolf (Globe House Publications, 1976), ‘Winter occasions’; Seizure (Eugene, Oregon), ‘Half songs, 1790’; Stand, ‘To survive’, ‘Bowl’, ‘Wants’, ‘Fly’, and ‘Lake’; Surviving in America (Tucson, Arizona), ‘The door’; Telegram, ‘The poet reclining’ and ‘The night music’; 23 Modern British Poets, ed. by John Matthias (Swallow Press, Chicago, 1971), also published as issue 21 of Triquarterly (Evanston, Illinois), ‘The stone poems’.
Previously unpublished: ‘Another night of muttering’; ‘Crocus’; ‘Surprised again beside the river’; ‘Shallow dreaming’; ‘Old movies’; ‘The Ubi Sunt variations’; ‘Fox in October’.