Traducere, prefaţă, interviu: Lidia Vianu

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It has never seemed right to call Alan Brownjohn a Movement poet. He has something of the Ur-English plain-speaking of that school, true; but his essentially un-elegaic note is altogether more contemporary. Nor would it be fair to characterize Brownjohn by his sometime membership of The Group. His human touch has allowed his poetry to address both school pupils and dons, eager general readers and demanding literary-metropolitan types. Is he, then, a Martian avant la lettre? The ludic postmodernity of many of the poems collected here, clearly influenced by Brownjohn’s long relationship with international and particularly Romanian literature, always serves to explore some aspect of experience, unlike the motiveless dandyism of Martianism.

Brownjohn is, in short, an original. Like all true poets’ work, his is instantly recognizable: judicious, wry, sure-footed. There’s nearly always the strongly-developed sense of a narrator: sometimes this becomes a persona. As befits this most distinguished of literary activists, the sheer – sometimes shocking – emotional intelligence of his writing is often applied to social and political concerns. In this, too, he is almost unique among contemporary British poets. The mixture of such social perceptiveness with a perfectly-poised lyric gift completes his uniqueness. This collection, with its thoughtful study by Professor Vianu, is a fine introduction to his work.

What do British poets read when they want to be reminded of the grace and insight serious writing affords? Very often, the answer is the poetry of Alan Brownjohn. A gentleman among poets, and one of our finest living writers, his gift to peers and juniors alike is a profound understanding of how the deftest prosody reveals the deepest humanity.

Fiona Sampson
Oxford, 15th February 2010