Ken Smith

Ken Smith (1938-2003) was a major voice in world poetry, his work and example inspiring a whole generation of younger British poets. His politically edgy, cuttingly colloquial, muscular poetry poetry shifted territory with time, from rural Yorkshire, America and London to the war-ravaged Balkans and Eastern Europe (before and after Communism). His early books span a transition from a preoccupation with land and myth to his later engagement with urban Britain and the politics of radical disaffection. The pivotal work marking this shift was his long poem Fox Running (1980), attracted renewed attention when an archive recording of him reading it was broadcast by BBC Radio 4’s Poetry Please in 2016.

His Collected Poems brings together poetry from four decades, including all the work from two earlier retrospectives, The Poet Reclining: Selected Poems 1962-1980 (1982) and Shed: Poems 1980-2001 (2002), and from from the posthumously published You Again: last poems & other words (2004), as well as additional poems from two early collections, The Pity (1967) and Work, distances / poems (1972). The book is introduced with essays by Roger Garfitt and Jon Glover. Publication coincides with what would have been his 80th birthday and with the 40th anniversary of the publication of Bloodaxe’s first title, Ken Smith’s Tristan Crazy (1978).

'Ken Smith’s Collected Poems ought to put his remarkable body of work squarely before a younger audience. His widely travelled imagination, his invention and dramatic lyricism continue to shed light on the evil times he went some way to prophesy.' - Sean O'Brien, Times Literary Supplement (Books of the Year 2019)

‘What we now have here is the collected poetry of a singular and driven voice. A poet who travelled widely both literally and imaginatively into some of the most difficult corners of the late twentieth century world; from Wormwood Scrubs prison, to the moors of his northern England, from Amish Pennsylvania to ‘a Sarajevo bread queue’.... This book shows how hugely successful Smith was as a poet, and what a resource he provides for those writing in his wake.’ – Ian Pople, The Manchester Review

‘This is an enormous book and a review can only really scratch the surface of all the riches in it. By the last poems, he’d moved through his own upbringing in rural Yorkshire and urban Leeds, through the American wilderness, Thatcher’s Britain, the various conflicts of the Balkans and eastern Europe and had reached the time of Bin Laden and the wars in the Middle East, in poems that are intense, luminous, at times dream-like, at times startlingly clear… I can’t praise this collection highly enough.’ – Steven Waling, Write Out Loud [on Ken Smith’s Collected Poems]

‘My book of the year arrived late and with a resounding thud. It was the Collected Poems of Ken Smith, published by Bloodaxe (he was its first poet over thirty [40] years ago) and a veritable door-stopper at almost 650 pages… He was always writing and lived to write. There are 632 poems in this lovingly edited and constructed volume. As a solid testament and memorial it is almost lapidary. But nothing for Kenneth John Smith was set in stone: it was modern, fluid, on the move, and he was always chasing it.’ – Nigel Jarret, The Lonely Crowd (Books of the Year 2018)

‘… 15 years after Smith's death, we have a massive Collected Poems to look at, rather than individual books or the two selected poems (The Poet Reclining and Shed). what a book it is! There are more early poems to delight in, and it is clear that themes of history, London (and other cities) and East Europe appear and reappear throughout all his work… an impressive, accumulative set of poetry, that attempts and often succeeds in speaking about, to and for the dispossessed, the poor, the homeless, the downtrodden and the ignored; all of us. In early 21st century Britain, we need this poetry more than ever, to inform and incite us’ – Rupert Loydell, Stride Magazine

‘Few poets can hold time and landscape in one glass with the consummate skill of Ken Smith… As attuned to the brutality of moorland terrain as Hughes, and as sensitive to injustices meted out to the labouring classes of history as Jeffrey Wainwright, Smith’s starkly beautiful poem [‘Colden Valley’] draws the drama of landscape and its uses and misuses, of the obligations of work and of prayer, towards one condensed, and proleptic melting-point.’ – Steve Whitaker, Poem of the Week, The Yorkshire Times

‘Ken Smith was a great poet… His last retrospective collection, Shed, confirmed the immense power of his poetry.’ – Jon Glover, Guardian

'Smith's writing exists in permanent disagreement with English fashion. A huge cast of overheard characters, wanderers, losers and remembrancers passes through his writing, bound by a common sense of loss and endurance.' – Sean O'Brien, Sunday Times

‘His poems are squeezed out from under the unrelenting pressures of history, politics and the natural elements… some of his poems read like translations from war-ravaged Eastern Europe.’ – Charles Boyle, London Magazine

'Ken Smith brought an original and memorable voice to poetry in Britain. He spent his writing life not so much swimming against the tide as ignoring the stream’s existence… He was one of those by whom the language lives.’ – Sean O’Brien, Independent

Ken Smith (1938-2003): a film portrait

This film portrait of Ken Smith celebrates the publication of his Collected Poems from Bloodaxe. It begins with a biographical sequence with commentary from My Father Fading Out, a BBC radio feature from 2003 in which he talks about his father and growing up on a north Yorkshire farm in the 1940s and 1950s. The rest of the film consists of archive footage from 1990 to 2002 including his readings of a number of poems. 1990: Berlin: ‘The pity’, ‘Being the third song of Urias’, ‘My father fading out’, ‘Hawkwood’ (two sections) and ‘Katya’s message’ . 1991: Cullercoats: ‘Eli’s poem’. 1999: IX Festival Internacional de Poesía de Medellín: ‘The Secret Police’. 1999: Cúirt International Festival of Literature, Galway: ‘Days on Dog Hill’, ‘Woman without a name’, Three in a play’, ’Task 17’, Task 18’, and ‘The telephone is in the key of C’. 2002: East Ham, London: 'Three Docklands fragments’: ‘The Enterprise Zone’, ‘Of things to come’ and ‘Yuppy love’.

Ken Smith in Berlin: five poems

Ken Smith was working in Berlin when the Wall came down, writing a book about East and West Berlin: this turned into Berlin: Coming in from the Cold (1990). He also took part in a series of readings and workshops in Berlin in 1989 and 1990 based mainly at the Free University of Berlin and organised John Hartley Williams for the British Council in partnership with Bloodaxe Books. This video shows excerpts from his conversations with John Hartley Williams and includes his readings of five poems: ‘The pity’, ‘Being the third song of Urias’, ‘My father fading out’, ‘Hawkwood’ (two sections) and ‘Katya’s message’.

Ken Smith reads 'Three docklands fragments'

This extract from Ivor Bowen's film of Ken Smith shows him reading Three docklands fragments from Shed (Bloodaxe Books, 2002). Ivor Bowen's film is a "bonus track" included in the DVD-book In Person: 30 Poets.

Ken Smith: 'Eli's poem'

Ken Smith reads his poem 'Eli's poem' in settings on the North-East coast (at Tynemouth and Cullercoats). This poem is from The Poet Reclining (Bloodaxe Books, 1982). Made in 1991, the film is from the Wordworks series of short poem films made by Tyne Tees Television with Bloodaxe Books, first shown in May-June 1992, produced by Mark Lavender and directed by Rob Cowley.

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