Poetry

Hermit Kingdom Update: We regret that we can no longer supply books worth less than EU 150 directly to customers in the European Union. Our catalogue is available through third party sites: please place your order through either abebooks or biblio to ensure that the transaction is covered by the IOSS scheme. If possible, we will prepay local VAT on orders over EU 150, but this option is not yet available for all destinations.

More recent stock can be found in our new in section.

Please click on the titles to view images of the books listed below.

Rewi Alley | The People Sing | Rewi Alley | 1958 | Jacket rather worn, with some loss to the spine. | £50

Constanzo Allione, Allen Ginsberg | Fried Shoes Cooked Diamonds | Mystic Fire | 1989 | 18007278433 VHS – 55 minute 1978 film narrated by Ginsberg & featuring Burroughs, Leary, Di Prima, Baraka & many other luminaries. I’m offering this video as a trophy only, as I have absolutely no way of testing it, but it is quite a glorious object in its own right. | £20

John Arlott; Michael Ayrton [illus.] | Clausentum | Jonathan Cape | 1946 | No jacket, cover rather worn. | £15

John Ashbery | As We Know | Carcanet | 1981 | hardback in jacket – overall, a very good copy but please note the following faults: lettering on spine has faded a tone; back cover of jacket is sunned; edge of page block foxed; previous owner’s signature on reverse of ffep | £40

Margaret Atwood | Interlunar | Jonathan Cape | 1988 | proof copy, light mark on outer edge, lower corner a little bowed | £20

W. H. Auden | A Certain World | Faber | 1971 | 057109466X Second impression in price-clipped jacket. The spine of the jacket is sunned, & the title & publisher’s name, both in red ink, have faded. The book is noticeably slant, with the front cover set forward. Gift inscription on ffep. No problem with text pages. | £40

W. H. Auden | The Orators | Faber | 1966 | Third edition in unclipped jacket. Red band on spine very slightly faded. Front cover set a little forward. Intermittent foxing to pages, which show some signs of handling. A good-looking copy but evidently secondhand. | £40

Djuna Barnes; Phillip Herring, Osias Stutman (eds) | Collected Poems | Wisconsin | 2005 | Unread copy with very light crease to cover & opening pages from previous storage/display. | £150

William Bell (ed.); Philip Larkin et al (contrib.) | Poetry from Oxford in Wartime | Fortune Press | 1945 | No jacket, lettering on spine rather faded, name on ffep, upside-down Foyles sticker on pastedown. | £20

Sinclair Beiles | Ashes of Experience | Wurm | 1969 | Quite fervent dedication from author on ffep, along with dedicatee’s signature & rubber stamp duplicating the price on the front flap. Predominantly white cover is worn & marked, outer edge of page block is dusty & marked, & lower corner of ffep is lightly marked | £100

Wendell Berry | The Country of Marriage | Harcourt Brace Jovanovich | 1973 | 0151226954 No jacket, cloth cover rubbed & worn at edges, with a few marks. Gift inscription on ffep. | £40

Giovanni Boccaccio, David R. Slavitt | The Latin Eclogues | Johns Hopkins | 2010 | no jacket | £16

André Breton; René Char; Paul Éluard; Keith Waldrop [tr.] | Ralentir Travaux | Exact Change | 1990 | Cover scuffed, lower corner bumped. | £40

Emily Bronte; Philip Henderson (sel., intr.) | Poems | Lawson and Dunn | 1947 | Very good copy in unclipped jacket. Spine & upper edge of jacket are sunned, some loss to edges, most evident at top of spine. Price has been increased in ink on front flap. Previous owner’s labels on ffep & rear pastedown. | £30

Charles Causley | Union Street | Rupert Hart-Davis | 1957 | first edition in unclipped jacket, mark on lower edge of back cover | £20

C. P. Cavafy, George Seferis, Odysseus Elytis, Nikos Gatsos; Edmund Keeley & Philip Sherrard (trs) | Four Greek Poets | Penguin | 1970 | 0140420916 Light wear to cover & edge, front cover set slightly forward, paper tanned with age. | £25

George Chapman (trans); Henry Morley (intr.) | Homer’s Iliad | Routledge | 1884 | Morley’s Universal Library edition. Reading copy only. Cover is worn, with no title on spine (presumably a label has come adrift at some time). Front endpaper is detached, with loss to its edge. Rear hinge is exposed & fragile. Ownership signature on prelims. Text pages are foxed, but otherwise unproblematic. | £15

Walter W. Skeat [ed.] | The Complete Works of Geoffrey Chaucer: Volume I: Romaunt of the Rose; Minor Poems | Clarendon Press | 1926 | Second edition. A couple of little nicks to top edge of the spine. Gilt decoration a little rubbed at base of spine. | £20

Walter W. Skeat [ed.] | The Complete Works of Geoffrey Chaucer: Volume II: Boethius and Troilus | Clarendon Press | 1926 | Second edition. Gilt decoration a little rubbed at base of spine. Lower edge of ffep slightly roughly cut. | £20

Walter W. Skeat [ed.] | The Complete Works of Geoffrey Chaucer: Volume IV: The Canterbury Tales: Text | Clarendon Press | 1940 | Second edition. A little rip to the very top of the spine. Gilt decoration a little rubbed at base of spine. Outer edge of pageblock lightly marked. | £20

Walter W. Skeat [ed.] | The Complete Works of Geoffrey Chaucer: Volume V: The Canterbury Tales: Notes | Clarendon Press | 1934 | Second edition. Spine & upper edge of cover lightly marked. Gilt decoration a little rubbed at base of spine. | £20

Walter W. Skeat [ed.] | The Complete Works of Geoffrey Chaucer: Volume VI: Introduction, Glossary, and Indexes | Clarendon Press | 1926 | Gilt decoration a little rubbed at base of spine. | £20

Walter W. Skeat [ed.] | The Complete Works of Geoffrey Chaucer: Volume VII: Chaucerian and Other Pieces | Clarendon Press | 1935 | Gilt decoration a little rubbed at base of spine. | £20

Paul Claudel | A Hundred Movements for a Fan | Quartet | 1992 | 9780704301757 Light external wear, most evident at corners of cover. | £20

Claudian / Leonard Digges [tr] / H. H. Huxley [ed] | The Rape of Proserpine | Liverpool | 1959 | paperback in jacket, bookplate on reverse of cover, edge foxed, front cover set a little forward, no problem with text pages, ready to post in UK |  £20

Andrew Crozier & Tim Longville | A Various Art | Carcanet | 1987 | 9780856356988 Lower edge of jacket lightly marked, spine faded. Outer edge of pageblock a little dustmarked & foxed. Outer tip of one page folded over. | £25

Dante | The Convivio of Dante Alighieri | Dent | 1940 | Temple Classics reprint. No jacket. Some wear to edge of boards, most evident at the top. Some foxing to prelims, including frontispiece. | £50

Ian Davie (ed.); Philip Larkin et al (contrib.) | Oxford Poetry 1942-1943 | Basil Blackwell | 1943 | Cover is worn, with some loss around extremities of spine. Corners of slim booklet are bowed. Text pages in very good condition. | £150

Robert Desnos; William Kulik [tr.] | The Voice of Robert Desnos – Selected Poems | Sheep Meadow Press | 2004 | 9781931357944 Very light external wear. | £30

Tim Dlugos; David Trinidad [ed.]; Dennis Cooper [intr.] | Powerless – selected poems 1973-1990 | High Risk | 1996 | 9781852424077 Paper tanned with age, base of spine a little bumped. | £35

Ernest Dowson | The Poems of Ernest Dowson | Unicorn Books | 1946 | No jacket, previous owner’s name on ffep. | £30

Aidan Andrew Dun | Salvia Divinorum | Goldmark | 2007 | 9781870507110 First edition. Stapled pamphlet in jacket, inscribed by author on ffep. | £100

Hans Faverey | Chrysanthemums, Rowers | Leon Works | 2011 | 9780976582052 Pale cover & edge a little marked. | £20

Lawrence Ferlinghetti | Back Roads to Far Towns after Basho | 1971 | 2nd printing, outer edge of page block is foxed, otherwise a very good copy | £35

David Goldstein [tr.] | The Jewish Poets of Spain | Penguin | 1982 | Cover scuffed at edges, paper lightly tanned with age. | £15

Nikolay Gumilyov | The Pillar of Fire | Anvil | 1999 | 978085643105 Cover & edge worn, spine sunned, lower edge of page-block marked, gift inscription on ffep. Text pages in very good condition. | £20

Michael Hamburger (tr., ed.) | German Poetry 1910-1975 | Carcanet | 1977 | 085635161X Hardback in price-clipped jacket, first signs of foxing on outer edge of page-block. | £30

Dick Higgins | A Book about Love & War & Death | Something Else Press | 1972 | 0871100827 Worn reading copy. No problem with text pages. | £20

Anselm Hollo | The Man in the Treetop Hat | Turret Books | 1968 | No 53 of 100 copies signed by author & artist. Spine & top edge of back cover of jacket faded, a little foxing to edge of pageblock. | £25

Ted Hughes; Peter Keen (photos) | River | Faber | 1983 | 571130887 First printing in unclipped jacket. Jacket is sunned, with a light stain at the bottom of the spine, & a nick at the top of the fold of the front panel / spine. Internally, the book is in excellent condition. | £75

Walter Savage Landor | The Hellenics, comprising Heroic Idyls, &c. | Nichol | 1859 | New Edition, Enlarged. Bookplate stuck over outline of larger removed bookplate on front pastedown; ownership signatures on ffep. Some wear to extremities of spine, endpapers etc. foxed. | £30

Robert Lax | New Poems 1962/1985 | Coracle | 1986 | 3922760074 White cover is a little sunned, slightly worn at corners; lower edge of pageblock is a little shelfmarked. | £100

Gerry Loose | Starworks | Longhouse | 2009 | Approximately A7 sized publication, 2 strips of text in a folded card cover, secured by a printed band. | £10

Robert Lowell | The Dolphin | Faber | 1973 | first edition in unclipped jacket | £15

Hugh MacDiarmid | Second Hymn to Lenin and Other Poems | Stanley Nott | 1935 | First edition, no jacket. Yellow cloth cover is a little worn & marked. 1935 ownership signature on ffep. A few page numbers noted in pencil on rear pastedown. | £50

Gerald Malanga | Prelude to International Velvet Debutante | Great Lakes | 1967 | Minor general wear, most evident at corners. | £40

David Mallet: The Works of David Mallet : 3 volumes in 1. Georg Olms 2002 hardback with light wear to cover. £50

F. T. Marinetti | Selected Poems and Related Prose | Yale | 2002 | 9780300041033 Light wear to unclipped jacket from previous storage/display. | £40

Vladimir Mayakovsky | Vladimir Ilyich Lenin | Progress | 1976 | A handsome copy in dustjacket. The spine of the jacket is faded, & a little worn at the top. There is some foxing to the pale cloth cover of the book, which has also picked up some very faint offset from the red reverse side of the jacket. There is an old sterling price marked in blue pencil on the first page of the book. | £30

Vladimir Mayakovsky | Plays / Articles / Essays | Raduga | 1987 | Volume three of Mayakovsky’s SELECTED WORKS IN THREE VOLUMES. Very good hardback in jacket. Lower corners of jacket lightly marked. | £50

Charlotte Mew; Val Warner [ed., intr.] | Charlotte Mew: Collected Poems & Selected Prose | Carcanet | 2003 | 9781857547061 Very light external wear. | £30

Cesar Moro; Philip Ward (tr.) | The Scandalous Life of Cesar Moro | Oleander Press | n.d. | Stapled pamphlet with worn cover & edge. | £20

Shovkat Niyazi | Voices of Friends : Soviet Poets | Progress | 1973 | hardback in jacket – white background of jacket is sunned, & there are several short closed tears at the edge – gift inscription on ffep, marks have been put beside a number of poems in the Contents list | £17.50

Sharon Olds | The Father | Jonathan Cape | 2009 | 9780224090025 Book is a little slant, with front cover set forward. | £15

Douglas Oliver | Kind | Agneau 2; Allardyce, Barnett | 1987 | 0907954057 White cover has picked up some marks, text pages in excellent condition. | £30

Peter Orlovsky | Clean Asshole Poems, Smiling Vegetable Songs | City Lights | 1980 | 1980 second printing. Edge & white areas of cover foxed, faint pencil traces on ffep, text pages in vg condition. | £75

Kenneth Patchen | Hallelujah Anyway | New Directions | n.d. | Hardback with pictorial cover in unclipped jacket. Spine of jacket is faded but fully legible, edges of jacket are worn. Very top of spine of the hardcover is sunned. Pre-decimal sterling price is marked on front flap in pencil. | £40

Kenneth Patchen (illus.), Miriam Patchen (intr.), Herman Berlandt & Neeli Cherkovski (eds) | Peace or Perish: A Crisis Anthology | Poets for Peace | 1983 | Anthology including work by Diane di Prima, Robert Creeley & Allen Ginsberg, inscribed by Herman Berlandt on ffep. Some wear to cover & edge, a couple of small pressure marks on back cover, which have left a faint impression on the last few pages of the book. | £30

Kenneth Patchen; Richard Morgan [ed.] | Still Another Pelican in the Breadbox | Pig Iron Press | 1980 | 0917530144 Previous owner’s rubberstamp on ffep. Light mark on outer edge of page-block. Top corner very lightly bowed. | £30

Claude Pelieu | Opal U.S.A. | Beach Books | 1968 | Large format stapled pamphlet with light external wear, rusted staples. | £15

Claude Pélieu, William S. Burroughs [intr.], Mary Beach [tr.] | With Revolvers Aimed … Finger Bowls | Beach Books | 1967 | cover & edge worn, edge foxed, no problem with text pages | £20

J. H. Prynne: Sub Songs. Barque 2010. Super colossal stapled pamphlet, light wear to cover. £100

Rendra | Ballads and Blues: Poems | Oxford UP | 1977 | 0196382602 Reading copy with worn, rippled cover & foxed outer edge. Gift inscription on ffep. No problem with text pages. | £30

Kenneth Rexroth | Poetry Readings in the Cellar | audio cd – disc in excellent condition, light wear to cover | £90

John Riley; Tim Longville | What I Own: Versions of Holderlin & Mandelshtam | Carcanet | 1998 | 9781857541755 Very light external wear. | £100

Rainer Maria Rilke; Edward Snow [tr.] | New Poems [1908] The Other Part | North Point | 1987 | 0865472718 Spine & edge of jacket sunned. | £20

Iain Sinclair (ed.) | Conductors of Chaos | Picador | 1996 | 9780330331357 Some wear to cover, most evident at foot of spine. Paper tanned with age. | £50

Gary Snyder | Passage through India | Grey Fox | 1983 | 0912516801 Spine & edge of cover sunned; back cover lightly rubbed; top corner lightly bowed; outer edge of pageblock lightly foxed; lower edge of pageblock dustmarked; no problem with text pages | £10

Thomas Southerne / Robert Jordan / Harold Love | The Works of Thomas Southerne : volume 1 | Clarendon Press | 1988. | Volume 1 only. Hardback with lightly scuffed cover. | £50

Jonathan Swift; Harold Williams (ed.) | The Poems of Jonathan Swift: 3 volume set | Oxford, Clarendon Press | 1966 | Second edition in price-clipped jackets. Pale jackets are rather worn & marked, most evidently on spines. | £35

Wislawa Szymborska | Tutaj / Here | Znak | 2012 | 9788324019250 Parallel text in Polish & English. CD included with book. Name on ffep. | £15

Maung Myint Thien | Burmese Folk-Songs | Writers Workshop | 1987 | Second edition. Cover is patchily sunned, a little bumped at the top edge & at the extremities of the spine. The printed band around the cover is held in place beneath a removable clear plastic cover. Although the plastic cover is in damaged condition, with considerable loss around the spine, I am leaving it on the book to protect the band. The text pages themselves are in very good condition. | £20

Alexander Trocchi; William Burroughs [intr.] | Man at Leisure | Calder & Boyars | 1972 | 0714503584 White background of card cover lightly foxed, top of spine lightly bumped, top outer corner of page-block lightly bumped, top outer corner of first page rubbed from the erasure of an old pencilled price, endpapers foxed. Still a good-looking copy. | £30

Charles Upton | Panic Grass | City Lights | 1968 | A few small marks on unlaminated cover, minor wear to edge, most evident at lower corners. Blacked-out name or similar on reverse of back cover. | £20

Derek Walcott | Castaway | 1969 paperback edition, lamination is starting to bubble on the cover, Trinidadian book shop label on reverse of front cover, light reading crease to prelims, no problem with text pages | £30

William Wantling | The Awakening | Rapp & Whiting | 1968 | Jacket is price-clipped; series title is partly faded on spine. Outer edge of page-block foxed. | £25

Lew Welch | How I Work as a Poet | 2001 | some wear to corners, edge foxed, back cover lightly scuffed – text pages unmarked | £50

Philip Whalen | The Unidentified Accomplice or, the Transmissions of C. W. Moss | Coyote | 2006 | hand lettered text, plain cover under printed wrap | £20

Kenneth White | The Cold Wind of Dawn | Jonathan Cape | 1966 | hardback 1st in unclipped jacket, outer edge foxed, a handsome copy | £40

Augustus Young | On Loaning Hill | New Writers Press | 1972 | cover is worn & rubbed, with a couple of small stickers which I would not personally try to remove, edge is rather foxed, no problem with text pages – First edition | £15

Louis Zukofsky | Ferdinand | Cape Editions | 1968 | £20