These are a traveller's poems: American desert and city, the Canadian seaboard, a garden in Mexico that time and topography have undermined, and another in Gloucestershire that careful hands have maintained.
It has long been said that Charles Tomlinson was one of the first poets to learn from American poetry. Like his stylistic influences, his journeyings have contributed to bringing out his Englishness, challenging it and keeping it spry, for there is humour and a frequent wit in these poems.
Charles Tomlinson, born in 1927, studied at Queens' College, Cambridge. He has published many books of poetry, and has translated selections from Russian, Spanish and Italian. He is also an artist. He taught at Bristol University, where he was appointed Emeritus Professor of English Poetry. He edited The Oxford Book of Verse in English Translation (1980).