The Hook

The powerful early poems of Duncan Bush are now available in this volume incorporating his two prize-winning collections Aquarium (1983) and Salt (1985) together with several poems published in pamphlet form at the time of the 1984-85 Miners' Strike. The poems in this book focus on a number of themes that Duncan Bush has continually refined over the years. His central concerns remain: the nature of work, the impact of industry on its environs, and the fate of modern man at the centre of a complicated web of social, political and personal forces. We encounter football fans and navvies, farm labourers and the beach set, mythical heroes and the youthful unemployed. The poet evokes with equal immediacy the Mississippi river and the Mediterranean littoral, urban London, a non-tourist Oxford, and the historical and human landscape of his native Wales. Also here are many of the poet's outstanding translations - of Pavese, Montale, Mallarme and Baudelaire. Duncan Bush was born and brought up in Cardiff, Wales. He was educated at Warwick, Duke and Oxford Universities. His collection Masks (1994) was a PBS Recommendation and Arts Council of Wales Book of the Year. He has also published novels, Glass Shot (Secker) and The Genre of Silence as well as scripts for stage and screen. He currently divides his time between Wales and Europe.