Famous Faber Editor
T.S. Eliot is one of book editing’s most famous sons. Like many of us, he pored over manuscripts looking for the next great novelist or poet and then edited their efforts. He became a director of Faber and a significant and influential publisher. He also wrote one or two poems on the side, I’m told.
It’s fifty years since his death and the poetry prize which bears his name was boosted to £20,000 from £15,000 to mark the occasion. This year the prize has been won by David Harsent for his collection of poems Fire Songs. Harsent has been up for the top prize several times and his success is most welcome.
Some call his poetry visionary or mystical. He certainly has a hard edge to his writing, however, and an uncompromising view of the world and where it is going. His imagery is refined and arresting. He has the ability which few have to nail your attention with a memorable phrase and keep you pinioned.
In his poem Icefield, for example, which deals with the erosion of the glaciers he speaks of beauty in absences and a skyline set clean as a scar on glass. The music of the icefield will soon be lost in the rumble of some vast machine cranking its pistons. A simple message beautifully wrought. Not as allusive as some of his poems but rich in tenderness for what he loves.
He has written eleven collections of poetry and, like Eliot, has found time to be highly successful in other fields including crime fiction and TV script writing.
Read on…