The poet went to hospital for a scan. By Magnetic Resonance Imaging it was possible for doctors to look through his skull and spine, into his brain and spinal cord. What might be written in those places, the nervous system of the human body, indeed written in or into any organic body or into the earth itself. Jon Glover's poems emerge from his engagement with this experience and its aftermaths, the readings it provides. What writing might appear in the brain, on the inside walls of a cave, the atoms aligning and then colliding, and as they do so a story emerging which is the story of the inner nature of things and lives. The process of poetic discovery entails finding the distinctive forms of bodies and their modes of expression. The process of scientific discovery, making atoms do strange things, parallels the processes of the imagination in writing a poem, finding what elements fit together into a new message or a message that rings true.

About the Author
Jon Glover was born in Sheffield in 1943 and grew up in South London. He went to the University of Leeds where he studied English and Philosophy and started to work with Jeffrey Wainwright on the famous weekly magazine Poetry and Audience. Through studying, writing and editing in the 1960s in Leeds he got to know Geoffrey Hill, Ken Smith, Peter Redgrove, David Wright and Tony Harrison. He helped Jon Silkin to edit Stand from about 1963. He jointly edited, with Jon Silkin and Jeffrey Wainwright, the Northern House series of poetry pamphlets after Stand and Northern House moved to Newcastle on Tyne. Northern House published two of his pamphlets, The Grass's Time (1970) and The Wall and the Candle (1982). Carcanet published his first full book of poetry Our Photographs in 1984. This was followed by To The Niagara Frontier in 1994. He co-edited The Penguin Book of First World War Prose (1989) with Jon Silkin. He moved to Bolton in 1968 to work at what is now the University of Bolton. Having taken on a variety of teaching and management roles which helped to develop the wide availability of Degree courses in Bolton he became a Professor, Head and Department and Associate Dean. He is now a Research Professor. His research interests include the literature of war, recent poetry, the world of 'small poetry magazines' in post-Second World War England and the poets associated with the University of Leeds. He is the Managing Editor of Stand. The Stand website is at www.standmagazine.org and he can be contacted at the University of Bolton j.glover@bolton.ac.uk or at stand@leeds.ac.uk


Book Information
ISBN 9781857549676
Author Jon Glover
Format Paperback
Imprint Carcanet Press Ltd
Publisher Carcanet Press Ltd