"Partial Shade" is the common gardening term for plants that in fact need a measure of sunshine. In John Birtwhistle's poems, there is a continual play of light and shadow – and even glimpses of "full sun". This selection from his own work does not...

John Birtwhistle has said that "one writes each poem just to learn how to write it", and insists that he "doesn't care a dried pea for Artistic Development or Finding One's Own Voice". The result, of course, is that a strongly recognisable voice come...

Like many good poets, John Birtwhistle publishes sparingly. In his first collection for more than twenty years, he produces a dazzling array of poems on a range of historical, political and personal subjects. These lucid, witty, tender poems, by turn...

This is John Birtwhistle's first collection of poems since "Tidal Models" (1980). Its energy and concentration come out of an interest in a wide variety of formal models – from Chinese lyrics and Imagism to Anglo-Saxon riddles and Surrealism – and an...