Poems

Reprint of Tom's Leonard's first published book.


Many of the poems appear in his later books. The intention has been to copy this as accurately as possible, including any typos the original had.


Contents


11 The Other Side of the Ticket


12 Dream


13 Summer


14 Another Sunday-poem


15 Sweetheart


16 Patron of the Arts


17 Epitaph on an Introvert Wit


18 Television Advertisement


19 Little Jenny's Complaint (1)


20 Little Jenny's Complaint (2)


21 The Romantic


22 Hill Street


23 The Inner Melancholy of the Poet


24 Phallflower


25 The Psychopath


26 The Remark


27 similie please / say cheese


29-36 A Priest Came On At Merkland Street


38 She sells sea-shells


39 Psychiatrist


40 Words, for E.


41 This Island Now


42 Soft and Strong


43 The Voyeur


44 Honest


45 Landscape


47-50 The Performance


52 Perpetual Stasis


53 The Image


54 The Poetry Reading


55 Pyrrhic Victory


56 The Main Feature


57 Keep Right On


58 As Luck Would Have It


59 23rd Story


60 The Virgins


61 Storm Damage


62 I said


63 Full-frontal Astronauts


64 At the Employment Exchange


65 The Appetite


67-75 Six Glasgow Poems


76-79 Three Pollock Posters


Below is the description that been on back of the original book

Tom Leonard was born in Glasgow in 1944. He worked as a Civil Servant then as a sales assistant in a bookshop before entering Glasgow University as a student in 1967. He left two years later without completing his degree: a variety of clerical jobs followed. He currently works for the Post Office in London. He is married (and has one son).

It was during his term as a student at Glasgow University, when his poems appeared in university magazines, that his work began to draw some attention in Scotland. Poems subsequently appeared in established Scottish magazines, and samples of his work were broadcast several times on B. B. C. Radio. A local Glasgow publisher, Midnight Press, then published his "Six Glasgow Poems" and "A Priest Came on at Merkland Street", and both of these publications established the poet's reputation as one of the most talented and original young writers on the contemporary Scottish literary scene. After many readings in Glasgow and at successive Edinburgh Festivals, he was granted a literary award by the Scottish Arts Council in 1971.

A comprehensive selection of his work has been long overdue. This first "slim volume" will undoubtedly be welcome on many Scottish bookshelves; it will also, we are sure, further establish Tom Leonard's reputation beyond his native Scotland, and will provide a rewarding experience for all those throughout the British Isles who are interested in contemporary poetry.