Ian Gouge - Selected Poems (1976 - 2022)

<p class=ql-align-justify>At a recent reading event I was asked which of my collections was my 'best book'. It was an innocent enough question designed to aid a purchasing decision. It was also an unfair question. Any marginal preference I may have for one or the other is inevitably dwarfed by the knowledge that there are good pieces in all my volumes of poetry and that in expressing a preference a potential reader will always be in danger of missing out on something I would like to think 'worthy'. Yet you can't expect your average reader to buy all your books!</p><p class=ql-align-justify><br></p><p class=ql-align-justify>For a while I had been toying with the idea of pulling together a 'selected works' gathering all my favourite poems under a single cover. This notion had been growing in strength partly as a result of more regular attendance of 'open mics' at which I sometimes struggled to decide what to read; wouldn't it be rewarding to be able to take a single book to such events knowing every piece inside was a live candidate? On the back of that ambition the 'best book' question only added fuel to the fire.</p><p><br></p><p class=ql-align-justify>So here it is a 'Greatest Hits' from my seven collections published to-date. And because I couldn't help myself I have thrown in a small number of as yet unseen poems. Of course I should also say that this endeavour in no way diminishes the value of the individual books themselves; there are many more poems that might easily have found their way into this volume had size not been a consideration.</p>