Poems by Clive James

Some of the poems available here (most recent first) have appeared in newspapers or periodicals since The Book of My Enemy (Collected Verse 1958-2003) was published by Picador in Britain, Australia and New Zealand. Poems unmarked with a provenance are so far unpublished in any way but this. Eventually these poems will be collected into a book of their own, but I don't know exactly when that will happen, because I have never yet resolved in my mind the eternal question of whether a book of poems should be slim, so as to denote quality, or chubby, so as to denote value for money. Ideally, the format should denote both. While I ponder this abiding question, I will continue, perhaps presumptuously, to make my recent work available through this new, post-Gutenberg, post-everything, system of publication. Meanwhile, the older work is still available in The Book of My Enemy as it gamely pursues its career in paperback format. The book is described in the "Recent Books" section and there are links to a few of its constituent poems, if the reader who begins with the poems listed here should feel curious about what I was up to in verse form during the 45 years before I found myself commandeered by the peremptory impulse of this current phase.