The Long and the Short of It: Poems 1955-2005: Amazon.co.uk: Roy Fisher: Books

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The Long and the Short of It celebrates the 50-year-long writing career of Roy Fisher and the all-too-short 75 years (thus far) he has lived on this planet. Playing the language, pleasuring the imagination and teasing the senses, Fisher's witty, inventive and anarchic poetry has given lasting delight to his many dedicated readers. Roy Fisher's most notable achievements have included his exploration of the modern city, his experiments with perception and sensory experience, his jazz-inspired prose and his political and cultural comedies. His voice too has made its argumentative presence strongly felt: uplifting but also down-to-earth, sometimes cantankerous but also companionable, sarcastic yet sociable, playfully extravagant while wise and grounded. The Long and the Short of It covers the entire range of Fisher's work, from its fraught beginnings in the 1950s through major texts of the 1960s and 1970s as City, The Ship's Orchestra and 'Wonders of Obligation' to A Furnace, his 1980s masterpiece, and beyond. 'There is no poet alive whose work has challenged or interested me more' - august kleinzahler '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

About the Author

roy fisher has published over 30 poetry books, and has been 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). Born in 1930 in Handsworth, Birmingham, he retired as Senior Lecturer in American Studies from Keele University in 1982. He is a freelance writer and jazz musician, and lives in Derbyshire. Fisher's poetry is most often associated with the post-industrial landscape of his native English Midlands, but his work is universal in its appeal.