Basil Bunting - The Poems of Basil Bunting

So many people have been kind to me during the preparation of this work; the extraordinary generosity and calibre of those listed below is an exceptional tribute to Basil Bunting.

First and literally foremost, Christopher Ricks is a superlative mentor, and I am deeply grateful to him in ways this page cannot contain. Similarly, Tom Pickard has kept me steadily inspired and in perspective as both a friend, a living link to Bunting and to the North, and as a terrific poet. I acknowledge also Archie Burnett of the Editorial Institute, Boston University, Rosanna Warren of the University of Chicago, and John Burt of Brandeis University for their steady guidance in the formative years of this work.

I also wish to thank: Basil Buntings literary executor, John Halliday, for years of generosity to me and for his diligent care for the poets legacy; Buntings devoted scholars, above all the late Richard Caddel, who gave me his blessing and so much of his time; Richard Burton, Buntings estimable and ingenious biographer; Neil Astley for making so many things possible, faithfully keeping Buntings work in print; Peter Makin and Peter Quartermain for responding to my queries about their own work with the warmest generosity imaginable; Michael Hofmann for keeping me in perspective about many things along the way; Stephen Regan and Annabel Hayes of the University of Durham for their anchoring academic work with regard to everything Bunting; Dr Alex Niven for his work on the poets correspondence; David Slavitt and Michael Hendry for solving a puzzle; the late Robert Bertholf, former Curator of the Poetry Collection, SUNY Buffalo; Dr Martin Maw, Oxford University Press Archives; Laura Blue of The Ubyssey, University of British Columbia; Dr Todd Hearon; Britt Bell of Moyer Bell Ltd; James Jayo, MA; Helen Hills of the Rare Books Department, Cambridge University Library; the late Hugh Amory of the Houghton Library, Harvard University; Carol and the late Leonard Share; and Bob and Carol Pope. I am grateful to the Harry Ransom Research Center, for awarding me a 201415 Research Fellowship in the Humanities, and the staff of the Palace Green Library Special Collections at the University of Durham, especially Mike Harkness and Francis Gotto, who did everything possible to facilitate my research. I am grateful to the Lilly Library, Indiana University, Bloomington; to the Harry Ransom Centre, University of Texas at Austin; and to the Basil Bunting Poetry Archive, Durham University Library Special Collections, for the use of manuscript and unpublished material. Two editors at Faber, Paul Keegan and then Matthew Hollis, were incredibly devoted to bringing Buntings work to the list of that great press. Moreover, I owe particular gratitude to Donald Sommerville, whose sharp study and long toil with regard to matters of design, copyediting and proofreading strengthened the text of this book in every way. This edition would have been unthinkable without these, but impossible without the intelligent and enduring support of Jacquelyn Pope and the enormous good cheer of our daughter, Madeleine Share, who was born as these pages were composed.

I dedicate this work to Richard Caddel and Robert Dearborn Pope, neither of whom lived to see its completion, but who both had complete faith in me.