Branch-Lines

Branch-Lines: Edward Thomas and Contemporary Poetry

published by Enitharmon.

 

‘Branch-Lines captures the range of Thomas’s achievement, not least by combining poetry with prose. In this unique collection, fifty-five contemporary poets reflect on Thomas’s craftsmanship and enduring power. Some have chosen poems of their own in which they detect his influence, others have written new poems in his honour. Each poet has also contributed a piece of prose, and the volume contains an introduction, four critical essays, illustrations, a Foreword by Andrew Motion and an Afterword by Michael Longley.’

 

 

‘This collection of essays, poems and critical reflections has grown out of a conference on “Edward Thomas and Contemporary Poetry”, which took place on 12 March 2005.  The conference was held at St Edmund Hall, Oxford, sponsored by Tower Poetry and supported by Oxford University’s English Faculty.  The speakers included sixteen poets, most of whom had connections with Oxford; and some poets who were unable to attend contributed in absentia.  Seamus Heaney, who wrote a poem specially for the occasion, observed that the conference seemed likely to feature “all the bards, nearly, of Oxfordshire and where else [?]”.  Genially remembering “Adlestrop”, he caught the spirit of the conference.’

 

 

Second edition:

 

 

First edition: