Selected Poems

by Douglas Oliver

Poetry. "What was the shock like reading T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land when it was published in 1922. I think I know. I've just read Douglas Oliver's epoch-making long poem, Penniless Politics . I never thought I would ever read anything like it in the 1990s. Penniless Politics sets the agenda for the next 20 years."—Howard Brenton, The Guardian

135 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1996

About the author

Douglas Dunlop Oliver (14 September 1937 – 21 April 2000) was a poet, novelist, editor, and educator. The author of more than a dozen works, Oliver came into poetry not as an academic but through a career in journalism, notably in Cambridge, Paris, and Coventry, before attending the University of Essex in the 1970s. He received a B.A. (literature) in 1975 and an M.A. (applied linguistics) in 1982. Oliver subsequently lived in Brightlingsea, Paris, New York, and again Paris, usually working as a lecturer.