The Oxford Treasury of Time Poems

Soon the floodgates will open and anthologies for the millennium will start to pour through. This anthology of Time poems should stay afloat for years to come. Beautifully produced with a range of stunning illustrations, Harrison and Stuart-Clark have selected something for everyone and every eventuality. Subjects range from childhood, birthdays and memories, to disappointments, decisions and death. It covers the ticking minutes and the eternal questions of time. The poems and poets you hope will be there are there – Rossetti, Larkin, Dickinson and Hughes; accompanied by lesser known poems by Derek Walcott, Michael Rosen, U.A. Fanthorpe and Philip Gross, to name just a few. The quality of poetry should lead the reader on to collections by individual poets. The editors have also unearthed the poem that should be in the millennium dome – take a look at Tennyson’s ‘I Stood on a Tower in the Wet’. The anthology will be heart-pulling and thought provoking for anyone over 10 and will be (as R.S.Thomas says in ‘A Day in Autumn’) ‘something to wear / Against the heart in the long cold.’