Neck-Verse

"Neck-Verse", Ursula Fanthorpe's eagerly-awaited fifth individual collection from Peterloo - her last was "A Watching Brief" (1987) - is certain to become a best-seller like all her previous titles. Her "Selected Poems" (King Penguin/Peterloo Poets, 1986) is now an 'A' Level set text. In "Neck-Verse" U.A.Fanthorpe returns ('Back to the Front') to the hospital territory that she has made so memorably her own. There is also a major sequence of 'Bristol Poets", and several love poems, language poems about photographs. Elsehwere she ranges from cats and canals to children and 'Costa Geriatrica'. Certain poems chart dark journeyings, whilst others will bring on tears of laughter. The capriciousness of time and the weather is a strong presence in this new volume.