Poetry | A collection of autograph manuscript poems and prose extracts, 1986

English Poetry.

A collection of 64 autograph manuscript poems and prose extracts, solicited from the authors by a schoolteacher for classroom use, and providing a remarkably rich portrait of the British literary scene in the mid-1980s, including:

Ted Hughes, ‘Deaf School’

Henry Reed, extract from ‘Naming of Parts’

Lawrie Lee, ‘Town Owl’

Roy Fuller, ‘The Family Cat’

Seamus Heaney, ‘Rite of Spring’

Thom Gunn, ‘The Night Piece’

Christopher Logue, ‘Epitaph’

Elizabeth Jennings, ‘The Young Ones’

Kingsley Amis, extract from ‘After Goliath’

Geoffrey Hill, extract from ‘Mercian Hymns’

Anthony Powell, extract from ‘Caledonia’

Alan Bennett, ‘Place Names of China’ (with sketch)

Roald Dahl, ‘The Centipede’s Song’

Harold Pinter, extract from ‘The Islands of Aran’

 William Golding (signed photograph)

Also including contributions by: George Mackay Brown, Danine Abse, Vernon Scannell, Peter Levi, Douglas Dunn, Charles Tomlinson, Jenny Joseph, Athony Thwaite, Edwin Brock, Norman Nicholson, Edwin Morgan, Gavin Ewart, Iain Crighton Smith, Patric Dickinson, George Macbeth, Adrian Mitchell, P.J. Kavanagh, Kevin Crossley Holland, Peter Porter, John Arlott, Laurence Lerner, Meredith McGuehian, Pam Ayres (with sketch), Roy Fisher, Jon Stallworthy, Alan Ross, Alan Sillitoe, John Osborne, Peter Schaffer, John Mortimer, John Braine, Fleur Adcock, Stephen Spender, Arnold Wesker, Craig Raine, D.M. Thomas, Roger Garfitt, John Arden, Adrian Henri, Russell Hoban, Shelagh Delaney, Brian Patten, John Wain, John Heath-Stubbs, Christopher Fry, R.S. Thomas

Each piece written on the recto of a single leaf of paper with green and black margins (350 x 256mm), 60 of these leaves mounted in an album (415 x 300mm), a small number with related letters and cuttings on the facing versos, each numbered and captioned on the mount, the album with a stencilled title on upper cover (“Writers who have written to us Poets Novelists Playwrights”), one poem (Ted Hughes, 'Deaf School') framed, and three contributions loose at the back of the album, together with three related letters and some press cuttings, some creasing and occasional smudging, light wear to upper cover

A FINE COLLECTION OF AUTOGRAPH POETRY WITH AN UNUSUAL HISTORY. In the summer of 1986 a teacher, Graeme Kent, wrote to a wide range of authors. He sent each a blank sheet of paper and invited them to write out a poem or prose extract and return it to him for use in the classroom at Boston St Thomas, a primary school in Lincolnshire, especially for teaching literature to a class of deaf children. The generous and warm-hearted hand-written responses that he received provides a snapshot of poets and other authors who were active at the time, from poets who had come of age in the 1930s, sometime "Angry Young Men", Mersey poets of the 1960s, through to the younger generation of "Martian Poets" such as Craig Raine. The roster of writers includes major figures such as Seamus Heaney and Ted Hughes, writers who wrote extensively for children such as Russell Hoban and of course Roald Dahl, but also a number of more difficult poets who are less likely contributors to a school anthology such as R.S. Thomas and Geoffrey Hill. Many of the poems are dedicated to the children of Boston St Thomas School.