'This very lively collection contains a wide sweep of poems, many of them prize-winning, taking readers on a remarkable journey. Some look to the past, others to the future, but all are of their time: the reverberating now. The tone is contemporary and bold, while the poet’s sensibility tends to favour an eclectic inclusiveness. Uniformly, this wide-ranging and poetically inclusive collection demands to be enjoyed.'
Source: Publisher's blurb.
'This collection of poems by John Jenkins is broad, and deep and filled with feeling and wit. Expansive in vision of the human predicament, and various in form. There is evidence of travel and international lived experience; insight into global figures.' (Introduction)
'Two-thirds of the way into this book, in ‘Poem for Dylan Thomas’, a salute to his boyhood poetic hero, John Jenkins finally comes clean: ‘But I confess,’ he tells us, ‘I never wanted to be anything but a writer.’ Poems Far and Wide, which it’s my honour to be launching today, gives us no reason to question John’s confession. Although this is his first new volume in some ten years, it’s a large and generous book. And yes, this poet loves writing, all right – he enjoys nothing better than to let his thoughts and inventions seize him by the pen, and lead him where they will, and whatever the distance.' (Introduction)
'The book’s title says it all in a way. Few recent books have shown such a variety of styles and poetic modes The styles range from sharp, Duggan-like, found poems – “Overheard on bus // It was like . . . / grasping at fogwebs” – to extended meditations, parodies and (in “The Annual Eros Motor Joyride”) exhaustive explorations of a single comic idea. The modes range from lyric to narrative and all the varieties within them. It takes a little while and a few rereadings to work out that this is not a grab-bag of recent work (“compendium” might be a politer word) but a coherent book, attempting, with some deliberateness, to push the boundaries of the possible in poetry, to reject conventional consistency which is, as one of the poems says, “a bloodless abstract, a lesser good”.' (Introduction)
'The book’s title says it all in a way. Few recent books have shown such a variety of styles and poetic modes The styles range from sharp, Duggan-like, found poems – “Overheard on bus // It was like . . . / grasping at fogwebs” – to extended meditations, parodies and (in “The Annual Eros Motor Joyride”) exhaustive explorations of a single comic idea. The modes range from lyric to narrative and all the varieties within them. It takes a little while and a few rereadings to work out that this is not a grab-bag of recent work (“compendium” might be a politer word) but a coherent book, attempting, with some deliberateness, to push the boundaries of the possible in poetry, to reject conventional consistency which is, as one of the poems says, “a bloodless abstract, a lesser good”.' (Introduction)
'This collection of poems by John Jenkins is broad, and deep and filled with feeling and wit. Expansive in vision of the human predicament, and various in form. There is evidence of travel and international lived experience; insight into global figures.' (Introduction)
'Two-thirds of the way into this book, in ‘Poem for Dylan Thomas’, a salute to his boyhood poetic hero, John Jenkins finally comes clean: ‘But I confess,’ he tells us, ‘I never wanted to be anything but a writer.’ Poems Far and Wide, which it’s my honour to be launching today, gives us no reason to question John’s confession. Although this is his first new volume in some ten years, it’s a large and generous book. And yes, this poet loves writing, all right – he enjoys nothing better than to let his thoughts and inventions seize him by the pen, and lead him where they will, and whatever the distance.' (Introduction)
