Standard Midland

By Roy Fisher

Roy Fisher is known internationally for his witty, anarchic poetry which plays the language, pleasures the imagination and teases the senses. But he is at heart an English Midlander. In "Standard Midland", he confronts and worries at nuances of perception and the politi of understanding. Many of the poems are concerned with landscapes, experienced, imagined or painted, particularly the scarred and beautiful North Midlands landscape in which he has lived for nearly thirty years. Shortlisted for the 2010 Costa Poetry Award, "Standard Midland" contains work mostly written since his Bloodaxe retrospective "The Long and the Short of It: Poems 1955-2005" and his texts for the artist's book "Tabernacle", his recent collaboration with Ronald King. Publication coincided with his 80th birthday. Critic Peter Robinson published an 80th birthday festschrift with Shearsman Books, "The Unofficial Roy Fisher", with contributions by Fisher's many admirers at the same time.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bloodaxe Books
• Release date: Mar 3, 2011
• ISBN: 9781852249236

Roy Fisher

Roy Fisher (1930-2017) published over 30 poetry books, and was the subject of numerous critical essays and several studies, including The Thing About Roy Fisher: Critical Essays on the Poetry of Roy Fisher, edited by Peter Robinson and John Kerrigan (Liverpool University Press, 2000), and of The Unofficial Roy Fisher, edited by Peter Robinson (Shearsman Books, 2010). He published four books with Bloodaxe. The Dow Low Drop: New & Selected Poems (1996) was superseded by his later retrospective, The Long and the Short of It: Poems 1955-2005 (2005), and followed by Standard Midland (2010), published on his 80th birthday, which was shortlisted for the Costa Poetry Award. An expanded edition, The Long and the Short of It: Poems 1955-2010 – including Standard Midland – was published in 2012. His first US Selected Poems, edited by August Kleinzahler, was published by Flood Editions in 2011. His final collection, Slakki: New & Neglected Poems (2016) is a Poetry Book Society Special Commendation. Peter Robinson's edition, The Citizen and the Making of 'City' (Bloodaxe Books, 2022) includes Fisher's early, previously unpublished prose work 'The Citizen', the precursor of 'City', with all three versions of that later sequence. Born in Handsworth, Birmingham, he retired as Senior Lecturer in American Studies from Keele University in 1982. He was also a jazz musician, and lived in the Derbyshire Peak District in his later years.

Book preview

ROY FISHER

STANDARD MIDLAND

Roy Fisher is known internationally for his witty, anarchic poetry which plays the language, pleasures the imagination and teases the senses. But he is at heart an English Midlander.

In Standard Midland, he confronts and worries at nuances of perception and the politics of understanding. Many of the poems are concerned with landscapes, experienced, imagined or painted, particularly the scarred and beautiful North Midlands landscape in which he has lived for nearly thirty years.

Standard Midland contains work mostly written since his Bloodaxe retrospective, The Long and the Short of It: Poems 1955-2005, and his texts for the artist’s book Tabernacle, his recent collaboration with Ronald King. Publication coincided with his 80th birthday, and the book was subsequently shortlisted for the Costa Poetry Award.

‘The personality that emerges from Fisher’s poetry, for all his influences, is altogether English: ironic, humorous, self-deprecating and unpretentiously local’ –

ELAINE FEINSTEIN

‘A poet of cities in growth and in dereliction…His knowledge of urban landscape is formidable, and expressed with an originality of touch which makes these poems, at their best, revelatory’ –

HELEN DUNMORE

‘Fisher’s fineness lies in the extraordinary, intimate communication he achieves. He accomplishes this through the medium of a sophisticated, well-mannered art…a real respect for his own and his reader’s individuality’ –

ANNE CLUYSENAAR

‘There is no poet alive whose