Author of the Month: J.H. Prynne
Selected by the Bookshop
Our Author of the Month for July is the irrepressible J.H. Prynne, whose just-released Poems 2016-2024 collects eight years’ worth of wild pamphleteering.
‘J H Prynne’s work is difficult, but (unlike the work of many other difficult poets) it is not at all cryptic’, writes John Clegg in the Daily Telegraph. ‘There’s no sense of meaning being withheld or obscured; nothing cries out for elucidation. It doesn’t mean, in that sense, at all, and if instead of getting annoyed by it you allow yourself to be swept away, it is buffeting and exhilarating, not at all like any other poetry in the world.’
It’s hard to say where to start – ‘the way is forward, sideways sometimes works’, as Prynne writes in Snooty Tipoffs – but for readers completely new to Prynne, the NYRB reissue of his early masterpiece The White Stones is a good entry-point; or for anyone looking to dive into the late work, 2021’s Aquatic Hocquets is astonishing and joyful.
From the publisher:
J.H. Prynne is Britain’s leading late Modernist poet. His austere yet playful poetry challenges our sense of the world, not by any direct address to the reader but by showing everything in a different light, enacting slips and changes…
From the publisher:
J.H. Prynne is Britain's leading late Modernist poet. His austere yet playful poetry challenges our sense of the world, not by any direct address to the reader but by showing everything in a different light, enacting slips and changes of…
From the publisher:
J. H. Prynne is Britain’s leading late-modernist poet. His work, as it has emerged since the 1960s, when he was close to Charles Olson and Edward Dorn, is marked by a remarkable combination of lyricism and abstraction, at once austere…
From the publisher:
20 pages. Lithograph printed on acid-free paper. Covers digitally printed, inside and out, with no two copies exactly alike. Edition of 250. Stitched with brass wires. 16 poems.
From the publisher:
140 wide x 208mm tall. Risograph printed on acid-free paper and card by Earthbound Press. Assembled by hand and bound with brass wires. Published by Face Press, Cambridge, April 2024, in an edition of 150 copies.
From the publisher:
140 wide x 208mm tall. Risograph printed on acid-free paper and card by Earthbound Press. Assembled by hand and bound with brass wires. Published by Face Press, Cambridge, April 2024, in an edition of 150 copies.
From the publisher:
36 new poems. Risograph printed throughout, by Earthbound Press, London, on acid free paper. Large format book (~A4). Hand-sewn with red linen thread. Covers risograph printed in metallic gold, in seven variant designs. Grey endpapers.…
From the publisher:
Digitally printed on acid-free paper, with two full-colour images. Specially commissioned hand-made cotton rag paper covers (each unique). Stitched with brass wires. Peach endpapers. 24pp.Edition of 150 copies, published May 2023.The text…
From the publisher:
Six new poems. Digitally printed on laid paper. Full colour title page. Covers risograph printed by Earthbound Press, London. Bound with brass wires. Bright blue endpapers. 28pp.Edition of 150 copies, February 2023.
From the publisher:
Fifteen new poems. Digitally printed. Large format book (200 x 289mm). Stitched with brass wires. Covers risograph printed by Earthbound Press. Deep yellow endpapers. 28pp.Edition of 150 copies, September 2023.
From the publisher:
16pp. Risograph printed by Earthbound Press on acid-free paper. Forty-four rhyming quatrains. Pictorial title page. Edition of 150 copies.
From the publisher:
326pp, green endpapers. 281 new poems, in five numbered sections, amassing between them eleven epigraphs (from Samuel Beckett, Plenty Coups, John Gay, James Schuyler, and Christian Wolff, among other sources).Six blue section-marker leaves…
From the publisher:
Douglas Oliver (1937–2000) and J. H. Prynne (b. 1936) are two of the most original and ambitious poets of the contemporary era. Eschewing the conservativism of mainstream postwar British verse and embracing influences from…
From the publisher:
16pp. Risograph printed by Earthbound Press on acid-free paper. Translucent endpapers. Bound with brass wires. A poem in four paragraphs. Pictorial title page. Edition of 150 copies.
From the publisher:
11 new poems in an edition of 400 copies. 'Passionate fruitcake' (Shelf Three).
From the publisher:
12 pages. Lithograph printed on acid-free paper. Wire stitched into sparkly purple wrappers. Hammered cream endpapers. Edition of 250. 10 poems.
From the publisher:
New short poem. 8pp. Face Press, Cambridge.
From the publisher:
A new poem, dated 20 June 2021. Edition of 250 copies. Risograph printed and collated, bound and trimmed by hand.
From the publisher:
32 pages. Text lithograph printed on acid-free paper. Wire stitched in wrappers, risograph printed in full colour. Brass wires. Edition of 250 copies. 24 poems.
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From the publisher:
24 pages. Lithograph printed on acid-free paper, with colour title page and colophon. Front cover risograph printed in gold. Edition of 250. Stitched with brass wires. A poem in 20 numbered sections.
From the publisher:
48 pages, in heavy textured card wrappers42 new poems
From the publisher:
Soon too forgratify, brim over plainly moreover, inspect dear heartpassing swell, felt patched, fill to all loyal found.(from ‘For Tom’)
From the publisher:
12 pages. Lithograph printed on acid-free paper. Covers risographed in red, inside and out. Edition of 250. Stitched with brass wires. A poem in 8 stanzas.
From the publisher:
20 pages. A collection of fourteen poems. Risograph printed on recycled acid-free paper by Earthbound Press, London, and hand-sewn into specially commissioned handmade paper wrappers using linen thread. Full-colour title page…
From the publisher:
Puttenham defines 'apophthegm' as 'a short, pretty and instructive Sentence, chiefly of a grave and eminent person'; here is a unique collection of apophthegms assembled by the poet J.H. Prynne.
From the publisher:
In 1975 J.H. Prynne published High Pink on Chrome. The publication was to be avidly devoured by his admirers and fellow poets. Prynne's example loomed large, especially in Cambridge, and John James and Andrew Crozier would both often…
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From the publisher:
20 pages. Covers digitally printed on 300gsm acid-free paper. Front cover digitally printed in blue; inside covers printed in full colour. Edition of 250. Stitched with brass wires. 16 poems.
From the publisher:
The next installment of the ongoing Memory Working series. 24pp.
From the publisher:
28 pages. A collection of ten poems. Risograph printed on recycled acid-free paper by Earthbound Press, London. Produced in two editions, each of 366 copies—a larger paper format (roughly A5), and a pocket edition (roughly A6).…
From the publisher:
This most recent experiment with words on the page continues the duet-passage between J.H. Prynne and the possibilities of lyrical transformation, subsequent eventually to Poems (Bloodaxe, 2015).
From the publisher:
This volume is a new annotated edition of J.H. Prynne's 1983 poem The Oval Window, making use of photographs taken by the poet at the time and place of composition, together with a substantial portfolio supplied by him of source and…
From the publisher:
20 pages. Lithograph printed on acid-free paper. Covers digitally printed in red, inside and out. Collects seven new poems subsequent to the first printing of Memory Working. Produced in two editions, each of 366 copies—a…
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