Stanley Cook
Stanley Cook (1922-1991) was much admired in his lifetime but he never achieved the popular audience and critical reputation his work deserved. Cook went his own way, sanguine about the fashions of the poetry establishment, and quietly writing some of the most readable, intelligent and vividly achieved poems of our time.
Smith/Doorstop titles
In The North magazine
North 10: Stanley Cook on The Prospect Poem (read online at poetrymagazines.org)
Reviews
How’s this for a poetic description of one of the kids in your class at school: “Unhealthily pale as if he were grown indoors/or underneath a brick that excluded the sun” ?
Or this, for a likeness of one of your old teachers: “His fading youth was underlined by wrinkles/and floodlit by the sporty shirts he wore”? Yes, we’ve sat with lads like that in assembly and been taught by the bloke who “maintained his ideals in a mild-mannered way/that only invited opposition”.
Those exact and lyrical descriptions are from poems by Stanley Cook, one of Yorkshire’s unsung writers who died 20 years ago this year and whose reputation is well-worth reviving in preparation for the 90th anniversary of his birth next year.
— Ian McMillan, Yorkshire Post (read the rest of the article here)
‘Stanley Cook was an exemplary, compassionate, unsentimental poet of Yorkshire. His work is solid and warm with a distinctive local and universal humanity. ‘Woods beyond a Cornfield’, the title poem which runs to over 600 lines, is his masterpiece - complicated, emotionally bruising, and, like all his work, robust, questing, darting into beautiful, mysterious images.’ — Douglas Dunn
Publicity
Complimentary copies of Smith/Doorstop titles are available for publicity or review, and a 40% discount is provided for trade sales. (Contact us using the form here.)
To book a Smith/Doorstop poet for a reading, talk or interview, contact The Poetry Business on marketing@poetrybusiness.co.uk or phone 0114 346 3037. (If the poet has their own agent or representation, we will be able to put you in touch with them.)
