Poems by Clive James

Since my volume of collected verse The Book of My Enemy was first published in 2003, I have written other poems. Nearly all of them are made available here. Some of them are in my 2008 collection Angels over Elsinore and my volume of selected poems Opal Sunset, published in the US in 2007 and then in the UK the following year. Naturally I hope readers in Britain, Ireland, Australia and the US will want to have one or other of those books to hand, but for readers in other countries this might be the only way of seeing my recent work, so I keep the poems posted without a blush, and add to the list as I write more. In recent years the pace of production seems to have increased, and I trust that this has happened without the quality dropping. Usually the first criterion for a poem’s being included here it that it has previously been published in a recognized magazine, so it has passed at least one test of being useful. But really the test that counts is that the poem demanded to be written. From the inside looking out, 2010 was an unusually fruitful year, because I was laid low with various ailments and it was clearly time to reflect on a blessedly long life. When young I tried my hand at incoherent inspiration, but found out with experience that mature consideration worked better. By now, there is so much to consider that I feel the danger of running out of time: a subject in itself, although Keats was there first, in his early twenties. He had fears that he might cease to be before his pen had gleaned his teeming brain. At any age, it is a strict imperative to be labouring under. But the strictness sharpens you up. The poems highest on the list of links may not be in any of the published volumes, but there could be a new collection on the way. Until it appears, I will continue to make my recent work available through this new, post-Gutenberg, post-everything, system of publication. Meanwhile, the older poems are still available in The Book of My Enemy as it gamely pursues its career in paperback format. That book is described in the “Current Books” section and there are links to a few of its constituent poems. Those links might prove interesting if the reader who begins with the poems listed here should feel curious about what I was up to in verse form before I found myself commandeered by the peremptory impulse of this current phase.

Poetry