Changing Shape: New and Selected Poems

by Edward Lucie-Smith

The poetry of Edward Lucie-Smith begins in A Tropical Childhood (1961), a rich landscape overlaid with different kinds of emotional and spiritual hunger. The poet became central to the Group, leading its sessions and experimenting with forms, in particular the dramatic monologues in Confessions and Histories (1964). With Towards Silence (1968) his poetry sought a new direction. Weary of conventional verse forms, tired of the sobriquet poet, he began experiments with poster poems, concrete verse, poetry solely for recitation. His last major collection, The Well Wishers, appeared in 1974. Since then his poems have appeared in limited editions if at all.

220 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 2002

About the author

John Edward McKenzie Lucie-Smith, known as Edward Lucie-Smith, is an English writer, poet, art critic, curator and broadcaster.

Lucie-Smith was born in Kingston, Jamaica, moving to the United Kingdom in 1946. He was educated at The King's School, Canterbury, and, after a little time in Paris, he read History at Merton College, Oxford from 1951 to 1954.

After serving in the Royal Air Force as an Education Officer and working as a copywriter, he became a full-time writer (as well as anthologist and photographer). He succeeded Philip Hobsbaum in organising The Group, a London-centred poets' group.

At the beginning of the 1980s he conducted several series of interviews, Conversations with Artists, for BBC Radio 3. He is also a regular contributor to The London Magazine, in which he writes art reviews. A prolific writer, he has written more than one hundred books in total on a variety of subjects, chiefly art history as well as biographies and poetry.

In addition he has curated a number of art exhibitions, including three Peter Moores projects at the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool; the New British Painting (1988–90) and two retrospectives at the New Orleans Museum of Art. He is a curator of the Bermondsey Project Space.