Complete Poems

Description

In her foreword to All The Poems (2003) Muriel Spark wrote, 'Although most of my life has been devoted to fiction, I have always thought of myself as a poet. I do not write "poetic" prose, but feel that my outlook on life and my perceptions of events are those of a poet.' Including previously uncollected work, this new edition demonstrates her ear for the rightness of a line and her eye for the telling detail, her command of poetic forms and her ability to rise to the different challenges of freer verse. Spark's poems are witty, idiosyncratic and haunting, transforming the familiar into glittering moments of strangeness, revealing the dark - and light - music beneath the mundane.

MURIEL SPARK was born in Edinburgh in 1918. She edited Poetry Review from 1947 to 1949 and published her first volume of poems, The Fanfarlo: and Other Verse, in 1952. In addition to her poems Carcanet publish her memoir, Curriculum Vitae, new editions of her critical works on Mary Shelley and on The Essence of the Brontes, and a selection of her essays, The Golden Fleece. She died in Italy in 2006.