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Dear Reader, When I commissioned John James’ Collected Poems there were plenty of tales of previous failed attempts, some even portrayed John as a tricky character. Everyone new the book needed to be published, there was a lot of passionate support. When I persuaded John, we talked a great deal about what should be collected. We decided everything had to go in. Editing and typesetting were painstaking. We spent hours on fine alignments and adjustments. We replicated as much as we could from previous, often fugitive, small press editions. John was a delight, fastidious, committed; wonderful company. It may sound vain, but the book is a triumph. I love it and am intensely proud of it. Everyone should have a copy: it’s totally life enhancing. |
Here’s the critic Charles Bainbridge talking about James in The Guardian:
John James is an extremely enjoyable and charismatic poet. His work is like a vigorous breath of fresh air, full of variety, humour and surprise. It has a strong sense of lyricism and energy, a striking mixture of the experimental and the immediate that brings to mind the work of Mayakovsky or the New York poets of the 1950s and 60s. There is also the presence of the Romantic poets running throughout his career, especially in the poems that celebrate the Welsh landscape. We see this in the early “Exultation”, an adaptation of the 12th-century Welsh poet Hywel ap Owain Gwynedd, and in the brilliant “… or as we wheel / down over Crickley” with its wonderful opening lines. At his best James can sustain the kind of lyric flight that places him firmly in the tradition of the Coleridge of the “Conversation Poems” and the Wordsworth of the Two-Part Prelude …
John James: Collected Poems
I look forward to exploring James’ poetry.