THE COLLECTED EWART 1933-1980: Poems By Gavin Ewart

London, United Kingdom: Hutchinson, 1982 [First published in this collection 1980. Reprinted in paperback 1982.] This edition is now out of print. 412 pages with index. Some age and shelf wear; spine creased. Name of previous owner in blue ink on inside cover at top left hand corner. Otherwise no other markings, clean text pages. This collection was put together by the author. Ewart says in the Introduction "This collection is a collection - and not a selection - of my poems. This is not because I consider them all equally good but because I have aimed at completeness." Philip Larkin writing in Quarto said "The most remarkable phenomenon in the English poetic scene during the last ten years has been the advent, or perhaps I should say the irruption, of Gavin Ewart". Ewart (1916-1995) was a prolific British poet known for his witty and sometimes unsettling treatments of unlikely subjects. He uses the rhythms and recurrent obsessions of demotic forms - limericks in particular - to create a heavily stressed and usually rhymed verse that is robustly Anglo-Saxon. Many of the poems are sexual or scatological, mixing obscenity with lightly-worn learning and often revealing a depth of feeling under their nonsensical skittishness. In 1971 he won the Cholmondeley Award for Poetry for 'The Gavin Ewart Show'. Contents: Introduction; Early Poems (1933-39) including 'Phallus in Wonderland' (written when he was 17 years old and published by Geoffrey Grigson in "New Verse"); 'Poems and Songs' (1939); Other Pre-war Poems; War Poems (1940-46); Poems (1946-64); 'Londoners' (1964); 'Pleasures of the Flesh' (1966) [W.H. Smith banned this from their shops which resulted in the irreverent eroticism for which his poetry is sometimes noted for]; 'The Deceptive Grin of the Gravel Porters' (1968); 'Th Gavin Ewart Show' (1971); 'An Imaginary Love Affair' (1974); 'Be My Guest!' (1975); 'The First Eleven' (1977); 'No Fool Like an Old Fool' (1976); 'Or Where a Young Penguin Lies Screaming' (1977).