Alan Bold, Edward Brathwaite, Edwin Morgan

Penguin Modern Poets, Series I #15

by Alan Bold, Edward Kamau Brathwaite, Edwin Morgan

Genres: Poetry

175 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1969

About the author

Alan Norman Bold was a Scottish poet, biographer, and journalist. He was educated at Broughton High School and the University of Edinburgh.

He edited Hugh MacDiarmid's Letters and wrote the influential biography MacDiarmid. Bold had acquainted himself with MacDiarmid in 1963 while still an English Literature student at Edinburgh University. His debut work, Society Inebrious, with a lengthy introduction by MacDiarmid, was published in 1965, during Bold's final university year. This early publication kick-started a prolific poetic career with Bold publishing another three books of verse before the end of the decade, including the ambitious book-length poem The State of the Nation. He also edited The Penguin Book of Socialist Verse (1970) and published a 1973 biography of Robert Burns.

A lifelong heavy drinker who dealt with the boozy life of the poet in such collections as A Pint of Bitter, Bold suffered a heart attack in early 1998 and died in a hospital in Kirkcaldy at the age of 54.

Reviews

[JMJ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Alan Bold: Some were winners, others not so much but in particular I really enjoyed Bold’s poem ‘Headlines’ included in this selection.

Edward Kamau Braithwaite: Very engaging poetry that, particularly in the first six or so poems of this selection about Africa, conjure such strong imagery through the poet’s excellent use of language.

Edwin Morgan: I was already a fan of Morgan before reading this though I did think this selection wasa mixed bag - some really strong poems that play around with voice or form and others that employed beautiful language and imagery although I found the point hard to decipher.

[Jennifer]

I've been keenly aware in this Penguin Modern Poets series that these are all poems written in a different time, when different things were hanging over us, and big events were so much closer.

I connected with this volume of Alan Bold, Edward Brathwaite (who I have encountered elsewhere) and Edwin Morgan. All had at least one poem which resonated with me, but Edwin Morgan's In a Snack Bar and An Addition to the Family: for ML satisfied in very different ways.