Echoes from Eternity: 27. England (from Eland Books)

It seemed a good plan to turn to another of Eland’s Poetry of Place anthologies. This time, it’s England’s turn, compiled by A. N. Wilson.

He gets the balance just right: he provides a perfect selection of the idyllic and nostalgic, the reveries of a bye-gone age with which English poets are all too familiar. But the anthology doesn’t allow us to revel in them indefinitely; it is combined with laments over the waste laid by human progress and the realities and pleasures of the ‘ordinary’. I would love to have read nearly all of them, but that is sadly well beyond the scope of this project!