Collected Poems

<p><i>'If ever I saw blessing in the air </i><br><i>I see it now in this still early day...'</i><br><br>Laurie Lee is beloved for his writing on a lost rural world. His evocative poetry springs from his deep connection with nature as he tracks the seasons changing and the years turning over. Yet Lee's poems also captured war human relationships and distant places informed by his own experiences of lives uprooted by change and conflict. Written during the course of his lifetime the verses brought together in <i>Collected Poems </i>range over Lee playing his fiddle in a Spanish town; ecstatic in springtime of his beloved Slad valley; or digging for faith in the depths of winter.<br><br>Gathered in one volume for the first time and including a generous selection of previously unseen verses from Lee's archives these timeless poignant poems show him expressing the essence of life love and loss.</p> <b>PRAISE FOR <i>DOWN IN THE VALLEY</i>:</b> It is a fine thing to revisit this writer's landscape and hear his amiable voice in it again. A beautiful illustration of how in some way we are all indelibly influenced by the landscape of our childhood. <p><b>A landmark new collection of poems from the author of <i>Cider with Rosie</i><br></b><br>Laurie Lee is beloved for his writing on a lost rural world. His evocative poetry springs from his deep connection with nature as he tracks the seasons changing and the years turning over. Yet Lee's poems also captured war human relationships and distant places informed by his own experiences of lives uprooted by change and conflict. Written during the course of his lifetime the verses brought together in <i>Collected Poems </i>range over Lee playing his fiddle in a Spanish town; ecstatic in springtime of his beloved Slad valley; or digging for faith in the depths of winter.<br><br>Gathered in one volume for the first time and including a generous selection of previously unseen verses from Lee's archives these timeless poignant poems show him expressing the essence of life love and loss.</p> <p><b>Laurie Lee</b> has written some of the best-loved travel books in the English language. Born in Stroud Gloucestershire in 1914 he was educated at Slad village school and Stroud Central School. At the age of nineteen he walked to London and then travelled on foot through Spain where he was trapped by the outbreak of the Civil War. He later returned by crossing the Pyrenees as he recounted in <i>A Moment of War</i>.<br><br>Laurie Lee published four collections of poems: <i>The Sun My Monument</i> (1944) <i>The Bloom of Candles</i> (1947) <i>My Many-Coated Man</i> (1955) and <i>Pocket Poets</i> (1960). His other works include <i>The Voyage of Magellan</i> (1948) <i>The Firstborn</i> (1964)<i> I Can't Stay Long</i> (1975) and <i>Two Women</i> (1983). He also wrote three bestselling volumes of autobiography: <i>Cider with Rosie</i> (1959) which has sold over six million copies worldwide <i>As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning</i> (1969) and <i>A Moment of War</i> (1991).</p>