For the Future

In June 2016, J. H. Prynne celebrates his 80th birthday. A major figure in contemporary British poetry, he and his work are here celebrated by friends and admirers, with new poems and essays on his writings. Both a festschrift and a study of a highly original body of work, the collection offers something for all readers of Prynne's poetry. "J. H. Prynne is without doubt the most formidable and accomplished poet in England today, a writer who has single-handedly changed the vocabulary of expression, and who, through his teaching at Cambridge, has re-educated the sensibility of an entire generation of students.'' -Peter Ackroyd (Sunday Times, 3 December 1987)