A Letter to the Dead

‘Between now and then, I will offer you
A fist full of rock cress fresh from the bank
The valley tips of garlic red with dew
Cooler than shallots, a breath you can swank

In the village when you come. At noon-day
I will offer you a choice bowl of cawl
Served with a ‘lover’s’ spoon and a chopped spray
Of leeks or savori fach, not used now,

In the old way you’ll understand. The din
Of children singing through the eyelet sheds
Ringing smith hoops, chasing the butt of hens’

Lynette Roberts is one of the most astonishing and brilliant poets of the twentieth century. Though published by T.S. Eliot and Faber in the 1940s and ’50s her work unjustly fell off the radar for many years until the groundbreaking edition of her collected poems published by Carcanet in 2005. Twenty years on, this new edition contains an additional sixty-five previously uncollected and unpublished poems by Roberts, and a new epilogue highlighting her growing importance to our understanding of twentieth-century poetry.