Coming next week (November 2013) is a new anthology of The Poetry of Shropshire.  It will be available from bookshops and other outlets at £7.99 or direct from Offa’s Press .  I’ve had the pleasure of co-editing it with Simon Fletcher, manager at Offa’s Press.

We’ve included poems by the ‘classic’ writers such as AE Housman (A Shropshire Lad), Wilfred Owen and Mary Webb.  But, as it says on the cover of the book, there’s more to Shropshire than ‘blue remembered hills.’  There is also work by nationally-known modern poets who’ve chosen to write about Shropshire: Roger Garfitt, Fred D’Aguiar, Catherine Fisher, Frances Horovitz for example.  Finally there is work by poets who are experiencing the county as a place to live, work or visit today.

One thing I admire about this anthology is that it shows Shropshire in all its aspects – not just the fields and rolling hills, but its less-explored towns, its curiosities, people and history, its minutiae, even its darker side.

What a pleasure it’s been to co-edit this book, to find new poems and be surprised and thrilled by them, and what a discovery to find that they really do sit alongside one another to make a new whole.