Some Letters Never Sent

by Neil Curry

Deceptively relaxed in tone, these verse letters – sometime serious, sometimes whimsical – are addressed to people who, for various reasons, have been of importance in Neil Curry’s life. Ranging from Angela Carter to the Venerable Bede and from Odysseus to Gilbert White’s tortoise, they cover topics as diverse as smallpox and the paintings of Vermeer, landscape gardening, the King James Bible and Eddie Stobart’s lorries on the M6. There has not been a collection of verse letters of this nature since the Epistles of the Roman poet Horace and, fittingly, it is to Horace that the final letter is addressed, partly by way of apology.

80 pages, Paperback

First published August 28, 2014

Reviews

[Patrick Ballin · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent, often funny, sometimes touching collection of poems that I really enjoyed reading. Not a poet I have read before - thanks to my dad for the introduction - and I shall look out for more charming, witty poetry from him in future. The thread of the collection is imagined letters to protagonists from the writer's life and work, some current, others very much historic. Keep a translation dictionary or app handy as he dips into Spanish, Latin and other tongues on the way.