Contraflow

John Greening is the author of over twenty collections of poetry, most recently The Interpretation of Owls: Selected Poems 1977–2022. His essays on poetry are collected in Vapour Trails and A High Calling. He has taught in Upper Egypt, Scotland and New Jersey, and has lived for many years with his family in Cambridgeshire. Kevin Gardner is a critic, editor and Professor of English at Baylor University in Waco, Texas. He has published numerous essays on poets, from John Dryden to the present, has edited several volumes of the works of John Betjeman, and has worked on anthologies of church elegies (Building Jerusalem), country-house poems (Hollow Palaces, with John Greening) and Norfolk poetry (Before the Dreadful Daylight Starts, with Cameron Self). Ian is poet-in-residence for The Academy of Urbanism and Barnsley FC. He presents The Verb every week on BBC Radio 3 and he’s a regular on BBC Breakfast, Coast, Pick of the Week, You & Yours, Last Word and The Arts Show. Previously Ian was resident poet for English National Opera, UK Trade & Investment, Yorkshire TV’s Investigative Poet and Humberside Police’s Beat Poet. He’s been a castaway on Desert Island Discs and a subject of The South Bank Show. Cats make him sneeze.

• Foreword by Ian McMillan; 'A Conversation about Englishness' by John Greening and Kevin Gardner; Angles of Entry: 2020s: 'Foxglove Country' by Zaffar Kunial; 2010s: 'England, I loved you' by David Clarke; 2000s: 'The only thing far away' by Kei Miller; 1990s: 'Somerset' by Elizabeth Jennings; 1980s: 'England' by Elaine Feinstein; 1970s: 'Earthed' by U.A. Fanthorpe; 1960s: 'England' by Anne Stevenson; 1950s: 'Shipton-under-Wychwood' by Muriel Spark; 1940s: 'An Archaeological Picnic' by John Betjeman; 1930s: 'You that love England' by C. Day Lewis; Country: 1920s: 'Forefathers' by Edmund Blunden; 2020s: 'Daffodils push through in the mild first days of January' by Rebecca Watts, 'The Knowledge' by John Challis, 'The Only English Kid' by Hannah Lowe, 'Greensleeves' by Grace Nichols, 'Self-Portrait as Katharine of Aragon' by Penelope Shuttle, 'Chevening (X)' by Robert Selby, 'The Kingdom' by Jane Draycott, from 'Between the Islands' by Philip Gross, 'South and West' by Matthew Francis, 'For Cousin John' by Raymond Antrobus, 'United Kingdom' by Tom Sastry, 'The Morning After' by David Constantine; Divide: 1930s: 'Birmingham' by Louis MacNeice; 2010s: 'Another Country' by Sean O'Brien, 'Driving through the Pit Town' by Rory Waterman, 'Homing' by Liz Berry, 'Bridge' by Stuart Henson, 'Migration' by Mimi Khalvati, 'Cricket' by Michael Hofmann, 'Walk with Me' by Roger Robinson, 'Etcetera' by Steve Ely, 'Kerrie' by Elisabeth Sennitt Clough, 'The Walled Garden' by Sarah Howe, 'Stamping Grounds (Earlier)' by Zaffar Kunial, 'White Cliffs' by Carol Ann Duffy ; Keep Calm: 1940s: 'Still Falls the Rain' by Edith Sitwell; 2000s: 'All Possibilities' by Andrew Motion, 'The Thames Never Breathes' by Katrina Naomi, 'A Map of Rochdale' by John Siddique, 'Dead End' by Glyn Hughes, 'Hung' by Imtiaz Dharker, 'Going Places' by Glen Cavaliero, 'The Road' by Jane Draycott, 'English Zen' by William Scammell, 'Bollockshire' by Christopher Reid, 'Bam Chi Chi La La: London, 1969' by Lorna Goodison, 'Parade's End' by Daljit Nagra, 'Scene at a Conference' by George Szirtes ; All Change: 1950s: 'Middlesex' by John Betjeman; 1990s: 'A Major Road for Romney Marsh' by U.A. Fanthorpe, 'A View from Stansted' by Brian Jones, 'Home' by Fred D'Aguiar, 'Satellite' by John Greening, 'Tudor Garden, Southampton' by Ruth Padel, 'About Benwell' by Gillian Allnutt, 'Presents from My Aunts in Pakistan' by Moniza Alvi, 'Video Tale of a Patriot' by Glyn Maxwell, 'Cambridge' by Kate Clanchy, 'English Weather' by Wendy Cope, 'Broadmead Brook' by C.H. Sisson; And Be Merry: 1960s: 'The Whitsun Weddings' by Philip Larkin; 1980s: 'The 4.15' by Fiona Pitt-Kethley, 'Lonely Hearts' by Wendy Cope, 'England at Christmas, 1982' by Gavin Ewart, 'Sister of the Planets' by Edward Lowbury, 'Costa Brava' by John Gohorry, 'Apple Gatherers' by Philip Gross, 'Midsummer (XXXVI)' by Derek Walcott, 'Summer in the Country' by Alison Brackenbury, 'Summer Pudding' by Grevel Lindop, 'As the West End Allegro Subsides Today' by Jack Mapanje, 'Wailing in Wandsworth' by Kit Wright, 'A Prayer to Live with Real People' by Anne Stevenson; Recessional: 1970s: 'Three Knights' by Joseph Brodsky, 'The Vanished Places' by Neil Powell, 'Mercian Hymns (I)' by Geoffrey Hill, 'Time Removed' by James Berry, 'Ploughland' by Peter Scupham, 'The Branch Line' by Patricia Beer, 'Strike' by Jon Silkin, 'Gladstone Street' by Charles Tomlinson, 'Reformation' by Anthony Thwaite, 'Returning from Church' by Kathleen Raine, 'At the Castle Hotel, Taunton' by Peter Porter, 'By Rail through the Earthly Paradise, Perhaps Bedfordshire' by Denise Levertov, 'Leavings' by Seamus Heaney, 'Sad Grave of an Imperial Mongoose' by Geoffrey Grigson, 'The Shoot' by Elizabeth Jennings, 'Last Load' by Ted Hughes; Rebellion: 1980s: 'Rules for Beginners' by Carol Rumens; 1960s: 'Diary of a Rebel' by Rosemary Tonks, 'Adolescence' by Thom Gunn, 'Mrs Albion You've Got a Lovely Daughter' by Adrian Henri, 'Telephone Conversation' by Wole Soyinka, 'A Poem about Poems about Vietnam' by Jon Stallworthy, 'Demo Against the Vietnam War, 1968' by Dannie Abse, 'Nadir' by Molly Holden, 'Elm' by Sylvia Plath, 'What the Chairman Told Tom' by Basil Bunting, 'Homage to a Government' by Philip Larkin; Securities: 1990s: 'Phrase Book' by Jo Shapcott; 1950s: 'Afternoon Tea' by Dom Moraes, 'Eunice' by John Betjeman, 'Wind' by Ted Hughes, 'Watercolour of Grantchester Meadows' by Sylvia Plath, 'The Pot Geranium' by Norman Nicholson, 'The Balloon at Selborne' by Margaret Stanley-Wrench, 'Patriotic Poem' by John Wain, 'A Ballad for Katharine of Aragon' by Charles Causley, 'I Remember' by Stevie Smith, 'Leaving England' by Ingeborg Bachmann; Visionary: 2000s: 'A Vision' by Simon Armitage; 1940s: from 'Little Gidding' by T.S. Eliot, 'A Room at Nightfall' by E.J. Scovell, 'Daybreak' by Lilian Bowes Lyon, 'Son of Mist' by James Reeves, 'Wensleydale' by Patric Dickinson, 'The Island City' by Sidney Keyes, 'In the Backs' by Frances Cornford, 'Voices' by Frances Bellerby, 'The Country House' by Frederic Prokosch, 'Journey to London' by J.C. Hall, 'The Burning of the Leaves' by Laurence Binyon ; Power: 2010s: 'Diagnosis: 'Londonism'' by Rishi Dastidar; 1930s: 'The Pylons' by Stephen Spender, 'A Summer Night' by W.H. Auden, 'After the Jubilee, 1935' by John Squire, 'Children of wealth' by Elizabeth Daryush, from 'Autumn Journal' by Louis MacNeice, 'Searchlights and Bombers' by Geoffrey Grigson, 'Instructions from England, 1936' by Valentine Ackland, 'Now as Then' by Anne Ridler, 'The Silent Sunday' by William Plomer, 'The Eight Men' by Richard Church ; Endgame: 2020s: 'Lord of Misrule' by Gregory Leadbetter; 1920s: from 'The Waste Land' by T.S. Eliot, 'Innocent England' by D.H. Lawrence, 'In the National Gallery' by Siegfried Sassoon, 'The Trees are Down' by Charlotte Mew, from 'The Land (Winter)' by Vita Sackville-West, 'A Wish' by Ivor Gurney, 'Tell me not here...' by A.E. Housman, 'Voices from Things Growing in a Churchyard' by Thomas Hardy, 'The Sad Shepherd' by Sylvia Townsend Warner, 'As the team's head brass' by Edward Thomas; Exit Here: 'England, Where Did You Go?' by Holly Hopkins, 'England' by Dennis O'Driscoll, 'Being English' by Peter Daniels; Indexes and Notes: A Note on the Text; Notes on the Poets and Poems; Index of Titles; Index of Poets; Index of First Lines; Acknowledgements; Credits and Permissions

'A treasure trove for poetry lovers… The editors… have cleverly set familiar voices of the past alongside some of today’s best poets… If you tend not to read anything later than Larkin, this is a great way to bring yourself up to date.'