Aidan Semmens

By the North Sea: an Anthology of Suffolk Poetry Aidan Semmens

Publisher Marketing: 'Here, where Time brings pasture to the sea' - the eminent Victorian A. C. Swinburne, from whose long work about the lost city of Dunwich this collection takes its title, was not the first or last poet to be struck by the landscape, and history, of Suffolk. Until almost within living memory Suffolk was a farming-fishing place, not all that far from London, yet strangely remote. Perhaps for this reason its coast was already something of a haven for writers and artists before Benjamin Britten made Aldeburgh the base for his annual music festival. The county's climate appeared to make artists and writers, as did its superb medieval architecture and its huge band of sea. This collection of poems past and modern is powerful testimony of that, all of it both contained and released, created in and, to various extents, by Suffolk. This is a collection of poems that will surprise the reader: Suffolk natives, incomers and visitors are all represented. From older times come Algernon Charles Swinburne, Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, Ann Candler, Anna Laetitia Barbauld, George Crabbe, Robert Bloomfield and Bernard Barton. From modern times we have-listed in order of appearance-Andy Brown, Angela Leighton, Tamar Yoseloff, Ronald Blythe, Victor Tapner, Pauline Stainer, John Matthias, Wendy Mulford, Claire Crowther, R. F. Langley, Andrew Brewerton, Rodney Pybus, Charlotte Geater, Zoe Skoulding, Deryn Rees-Jones, Aidan Semmens, Michael Laskey, Herbert Lomas, Anne Beresford, Will Stone, Richard Caddel and Michael Hamburger. Contributor Bio:  Blythe, Ronald Ronald Blythe is one of the UK's foremost literary figures. His work, which has won countless awards, includes Akenfield (a Penguin 20th Century Classic - it was also made into a feature film), Private Words, Field Work, Outsiders: a Book of Garden Friends and numerous other titles. He is a recipient of the prestigious Benson Medal awarded by the Royal Society of Literature. He lives near Colchester.