The Orchards of Syon

In the words of the magazine Poetry Review, a kind of late fury has gripped Geoffrey Hill in recent years after a decade's silence, with Canaan (1996), The Triumph of Love (1998), Speech! Speech! (2001) - all published in Penguin - and now this new volume. All these books are driven by a profound quarrel with the modern world. This new book consists of 72 numbered poems, each of 24 lines. Together they make up a kind of Dantean eclogue in which the landscape of Hill's youth - rural Worcestershire - offers a glimpse of paradise in the midst of the modern world. This is a major poet writing serious, beautiful poetry.