The Game of Love and Death

John Heath-Stubbs’s Collected Poems 1943-1987 won universal critical acclaim and the award of the 1989 Commonwealth Poetry Prize. In this new volume Heath-Stubbs shows again his great learning and versatility in poems which speak of a lasting concern for animals, birds and flowers and which pay tribute to writers and musicians of earlier ages - Blake, Byron, Schumann and Webern - and to the poet’s contemporary and friend Charles Causley. There is a characteristic humour, too, in 'The Art of Lying in the Bath’, in advice 'To One Going to Paris’ and in an enchanting trio of poems for children. The collection is complemented by the brilliant drawings of Noel Connor, whose previous collaborations with Seamus Heaney and Tom Paulin have been widely admired.