New Selected Poems

by Tom Paulin

Hardcover with penned dedication by the author on the title page. Both hardcover and jacket are in very good condition. CM

Genres: Poetry

160 pages, Hardcover

First published April 29, 2014

About the author

Tom (Thomas Neilson) Paulin is a poet, critic and playwright. He was raised in Belfast in Northern Ireland where his father was the headmaster of a grammar school, and his mother was a doctor. He was educated at Hull University and Lincoln College, Oxford.

He lectured in English at the University of Nottingham from 1972 until 1989, and was Reader in Poetry from 1989 until 1994. He was a director of Field Day Theatre Company in Derry, Northern Ireland. He has also taught at the University of Virginia and was Fellow in Creative Writing at the University of Reading. He is now G. M. Young Lecturer in English at Hertford College, Oxford. He is a well-known broadcaster and a regular member of the panel for the BBC Television arts programme 'Newsnight Review'.

Much of his early poetry reflects the political situation in Northern Ireland and the sectarian violence which has beset the province since the late 1960s. His collections include A State of Justice (1977), winner of a Somerset Maugham Award; The Strange Museum (1980), which won the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize; Liberty Tree (1983) and the acclaimed Fivemiletown (1987), which explores Northern Irish Protestant culture and identities. Later collections include Walking a Line (1994) and The Wind Dog (1999), which was shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize. The Invasion Handbook (2002) is the first instalment of an epic poem about the Second World War. His latest collection is The Road to Inver: Translations, Versions and Imitations 1975-2003 (2004), which brings together work from four decades.

His non-fiction includes Ireland and the English Crisis (1984), Minotaur: Poetry and the Nation State (1992), The Day-Star of Liberty: William Hazlitt's Radical Style (1998), a critical study of the nineteenth-century essayist and radical, and (with Amit Chaudhuri), D. H. Lawrence and "Difference": The Poetry of the Present (2003), a study exploring Lawrence's position as a 'foreigner' in the English canon.

Tom Paulin is editor of The Faber Book of Political Verse (1986) and The Faber Book of Vernacular Poetry (1990). His plays include The Riot Act: A Version of Sophocles' Antigone, which toured Ireland in 1984, and All the Way to the Empire Room which was broadcast by the BBC in 1994. His latest book is The Secret Life of Poems (2007).

Tom Paulin lives in Oxford with his wife and two sons.

Reviews

[Maltheus Broman · Rating 4 out of 5]

This second anthology gathers more pieces from old collections by Tom Paulin as well as poems from his later books. There’s neither foreword nor commentary to it, which, given that Paulin’s poetry is loaded to the brim with allusions to other poets or hints at political events, might have been interesting.

There are many reasons Paulin is as revered as he is. Some critics appreciate his playful side; others prefer his obscure pieces. As for me, I find him at his best when he is portraying political issues interwoven within daily lives, as for example when garden work is disturbed by shocking news on the radio (Drumcree Three). Political protest is also shown directly in some pieces like (Of Difference Does it Make) or through memory and history (In the Lost Province). In reverse, the mundane infiltrates a political biography in a neat vignette of Trotsky’s life (Trotsky in Finland).

To a Political Poet refers to a poem by Heine who with much irony praises a songwriter who creates songs with noble flights of thought that are used as drinking songs but never for political change at all. Paulin pulls of the same spicy trick by lauding political writers who found their way into the school curricula with little result other than pupils having their hearts warmed up. Could it be Tony Harrison, another poet born in Leeds, to whom Paulin refers? Or perhaps, maybe even himself?

Honesty demands to note that some poems are quite godawful (From Landsflykt, L,…) or underwhelming (Oxford, Belongings,…). Yet other pieces could have been good, but aren’t, as in, one sees what has been tried, yet not achieved (Sentence Sound). With some of them, it’s hard to tell what kind of thing has been written at all and why (Clemenceau). And too often, the poems are simply too dry.

My favourites are The Emigration of Poets, a literary answer to Brecht in regards of poets and their country, as well as Love’s Bonfire, a memoir piece of love during the Troubles.

A mixed bag and a half.

[BrianC75 · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed these poems. Coming from Northern Ireland and living through 'The Troubles' I could empathise with the people, landscape and emotions Paulin writes about so well. There is a subtlety and dark edge to many of the poems which reflects the turmoil of the period.
The poems are diverse and cover a variety of periods and topics - 'Where's This Big River Come From' is about a conversation between two teenage friends walking beside the river Lagan. It captures that time in life wonderfully by using slang and colloquial language throughout. 'Fivemiletown' describes a doomed poignant love affair taking place in a west of Ireland town. 'In The Lost province', in two verses, he paints a superb picture of industrial Belfast and threads through it language and phraseology which outlines Ulster's problems and history. The feeling created is stunning.
There are many more gems to read - Enjoy!!

A really attractive edition of the book adds to the overall appreciation.

[Ed · Rating 5 out of 5]

Paulin somehow manages to write poems that feel perfect, but also so interesting and human. They feel like well-composed photographs of things he’s seen, what he’s felt when he’s seen them, and what he’s gone on to imagine. The souls he’s seen, and his own, constructed out of words. Living houses made by a carpenter who with his own unique magic allows them to form completely in the reader’s mind.

His skills are equally well-placed in weaving sprawling biographies of lives and the moments that make them, as they are to observing little jewels of humour and rudeness, like when he “stuck [his] winedark tongue inside her bum”, or when he’s comparing a poet’s pipe to a thatched cottage that houses and stokes their soul. Every page of this book held some new treasure, and there’s not many I can say that so earnestly about. I’m glad I stumbled upon him.

[Ryan · Rating 1 out of 5]

Pissing AWFUL book. Only one worthwhile poem in the pack (the sonnet ‘In The Lost Province’). The squib aimed at Tony Harrison is hateful.

[Salomeja Sandroschvili · Rating 5 out of 5]

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