Collected Poems

by Laurie Lee

A landmark new collection of poems from the author of Cider with Rosie

Laurie Lee is beloved for his writing on a lost rural world. His evocative poetry springs from his deep connection with nature, as he tracks the seasons changing and the years turning over. Yet Lee's poems also captured war, human relationships and distant places, informed by his own experiences of lives uprooted by change and conflict. Written during the course of his lifetime, the verses brought together in Collected Poems range over Lee playing his fiddle in a Spanish town; ecstatic in springtime of his beloved Slad valley; or digging for faith in the depths of winter.

Gathered in one volume for the first time, and including a generous selection of previously unseen verses from Lee's archives, these timeless, poignant poems show him expressing the essence of life, love and loss.

Genres: Poetry

175 pages, Kindle Edition

Published October 26, 2023

About the author

Laurence Edward Alan "Laurie" Lee, MBE, was an English poet, novelist, and screenwriter. His most famous work was an autobiographical trilogy which consisted of Cider with Rosie (1959), As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning (1969) and A Moment of War (1991). While the first volume famously recounts his childhood in the idyllic Slad Valley, the second deals with his leaving home for London and his first visit to Spain in 1934, and the third with his return in December 1937 to join the Republican International Brigade.

Reviews

[Sylvie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this book with my friend and it was actually a lot of fun!
We slowly discovered Lee's way if writing. He uses a lot of the same metaphors for the same things and the themes are very alike. I think that is really nice about reading a lot of poems from the same writer. The more you read, the more you understand.
Because we read it together, the similarities didn't become boring. We could talk about every poem as if it was the first, although we did recognize some metaphors and themes a lot quicker.
A lot of the poems were good, some were great and a few didn't do it for us.
I'm giving it three stars, because most of the poems were understandable and pretty. I think the only thing that's withholding me from giving it four stars is that, if you put all the poems next to each other, there isn't a lot of variety.
Besides that, I really enjoyed his poems. He is really talented in using metaphors to describe themes like love or war. If I ever need a good warpoem, I know where to look:)

One of my favorite poems:

~To Mother~

I see you prowling through the hollyhocks,
Or lifting with strong gentle hand
The drooping rose. I see you visiting

At oddest hours each flowering bush
Like a wild bee or a bird.
The humblest loved you as they loved the sun.

In your green fingers and your sky-warm face
You held the wild earth in a spell of love.
The barest stone would put on leaves for you.

Now you are given to the roots of Slad,
Into the soil whose soul you knew so well
You have rejoined the spirit of yourself.

And there your heart shall multiply forever
And cover all the valleys we called home
And grow its own perpetual Paradise.

Not in the pale remembered face, but everywhere
I'll see you now. In every shape
Which you first showed my eyes, flower, field and hill,
I'll find the visage of my dearest love.

[Gareth Williams · Rating 5 out of 5]

A collection I shall return to again and again. A treat to have some previously unpublished poems among the more familiar offerings. Laurie Lee has been a slow burn for me. I resented having to read Cider With Rosie as a Child but as an adult, I was drawn to his writing about the Spanish Civil War and never looked back. He writes with poetry (as he does prose) grace and confidence, using his familiarity with the region around Slad as both subject and metaphor. A great nature poet but also a thought-provoking student of war and peace.

[Gavin Lightfoot · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some good wartime poetry which I wasn't expecting to find and some lovely rural poetry, which I new I would definitely find from the the writer of Cider with Rosie, a staple school text book from my youth. Although most of the countryside poems describe the Slad valley where he grew up in the Cotswolds, I like this one about Kent, comparing England to a gawky girl after his travels in the Levant.
https://allpoetry.com/Home-From-Abroad

[Rhys · Rating 4 out of 5]

This turned out to be a very good poetry book. In many ways, Laurie Lee is one of those "blackbirds and foxes in her nostalgic hair" poets like Ted Hughes or Seamus Heaney, but I found him to be less arcane (though just as oblique) on the whole... There is an unexpected ruggedness and darkness to some of his poems, and his war poems are often powerful.

[Mary Rose Harvey]

I’m still learning to love poetry, but find it so soothing in hard times. Even when I read it and I’m still confused or don’t understand the message, it feels like listening to a song you’ve hear a hundred times but still have no idea what the lyrics are. That’s to say, you can enjoy it but let the details pass you by.