Peake’s contributions to books in verse
Anthologized poems are included only insofar as they were previously unpublished. So the many reprints are not included. As it is, all his poems can now be found in either Collected Poems or Complete Nonsense.
Unless otherwise indicated, the place of publication is London.
- Keidrych
Rhys (ed.), Poems from the Forces. Routledge, December 1941.
Contains ‘The Shapes’ (pp.85–86) and ‘Had Each a Voice, What would his Fingers cry?’ (p.87) by ‘Mervyn Peake, Sapper, R.E. (Bomb Disposal Group)’.
This is not the same version of ‘The Shapes’ as appeared in S&S. It is hard to ascertain which is the earlier one, since the two books were published at almost exactly the same time, but the S&S version would appear to have been revised from this one. - M.
J. Tambimuttu (ed.), Poetry in Wartime. Faber, 1942.
Contains ‘Had Each a Voice what would His Fingers Cry’ (pp.116–17) and ‘London 1941’ (pp.117–18) reprinted from S&S.
- Walter
de la Mare (ed.), Love. Faber, [September] 1943.
Also published in America by Wm. Morrow & Co (New York), 1946.
Reprints the dedication poem, ‘To Maeve’ (p.17), from S&S but without the title. - George
Herbert Clarke (ed.), The New Treasury of War Poetry: Poems of the Second World
War. Houghton Mifflin, Boston (Mass.), 1943.
Contains ‘London 1941’ on pages 114–15. - Richard
Church and M[ildred] M. Bozman (eds.), Poems of Our Time, 1900–1942. Dent,
[June] 1945. (Everyman’s Library, No.981)
Republished as Poems of Our Time, 1900–1960, with a modern supplement chosen by Dame Edith Sitwell. Dent, 1959.
Contains ‘The Cocky Walkers’ (p.259), reprinted from S&S. - John Arlott
(ed.), First Time in America: a Selection of Poems never before published in
the USA. Duell, Sloan & Pearce, New York, 1948.
Contains two poems printed ‘from MS’: ‘Grottoed beneath your ribs our babe lay thriving’ (p.133–4) and ‘The Consumptive – Belsen 1945’ (p.134–5), which were later printed (much revised in the case of ‘The Consumptive’) in Gb. - Denys Val
Baker (ed.), Little Reviews Anthology 1947–8. Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1948.
Contains ‘All Eden was then girdled by my arms’ (p.161) reprinted from Phoenix, Autumn 1946, p.19. It was later collected (slightly revised) in Gb. - Hermann
Peschmann (ed.), The Voice of Poetry (1930–50): an anthology. Evans Bros,
1950.
The second edition of 1969 is entitled: The Voice of Poetry: an anthology from 1930 to the present day.
Reprints ‘Van Gogh’ (p.134) from S&S. - P.
Gordon Smith and J. F. Wilkins (eds.), The Sheldon Book of Verse. 4 vols.
Oxford University Press, 1959.
Book 4 contains ‘The Cocky Walkers’ (pp.47–48), reprinted from S&S.
[‘Goatie’ Smith was a lifelong friend of MP – see MP’s Vast Alchemies, p.58 et passim.] - Peter
Owen and Michael Levien (eds.), Springtime 3: an anthology of prose and poetry.
Peter Owen, [1961].
Contains ‘Great Hulk Down the Astonished Waters Drifting’ (p.119) reprinted from 3 Arts Quarterly, No.2, 1960. Collected in 12P. - Guy
[Herman Sidney] Boas (ed.), The School Book of Modern Verse. Macmillan,
1962.
Contains ‘The Cocky Walkers’ (p.128), reprinted from S&S. - Laurence Durrell
(ed.), New Poems 1963: a PEN Anthology of Contemporary Poetry. Hutchinson,
1963.
Contains ‘Great hulk down the astonished waters drifting’ (p.92), reprinted from 3 Arts Quarterly, No.2, Summer 1960 (p.7). Collected in 12P. - Percy
William Diebel and Reginald McBurney (eds.), A Parade of Poems. Macmillan,
Toronto, 1965.
Contains ‘London 1941’ (pp.173–4). [Not seen.] - C[icely] V[eronica]
Wedgwood (ed.), New Poems 1965: a PEN anthology of prose and poetry. Hutchinson,
1966.
Contains ‘Out of the overlapping leaves...’ (p.129), reprinted from Poems & Drawings. - Charles
Hamblett (ed.), I burn for England: an anthology of the poetry of World War
II. Leslie Frewin, 1966.
Reprints ‘The Shapes’ (pp.250–1) and ‘Had each a voice, what would his fingers cry?’ (p.252), both from S&S. - Ronald Blythe
(ed.), Components of the Scene. Penguin, 1966.
Reprints ‘Had each a voice, what would his fingers cry?’ (p.229), from S&S. - Robin Skelton (ed.),
Poetry of the Forties. Penguin, 1968.
Reprints ‘Is there no love can link us’ (p.93–4) and ‘London 1941’ (p.94– 5), both from S&S. - Jonathan Bacon
and Steve Troyanovich (eds.), Omniumgathum: an anthology of verse by top authors
in the field of fantasy. Stygian Isle Press, Lamoni (Iowa), 1976.
Contains ‘Pictures and Paints’ (p.18), ‘The Rhino and the Lark’ and ‘Fish or Fowl’ (both p.19).
‘Pictures and Paints’ is the title the editors gave to ‘An old and crumbling parapet’ which had appeared in BN. The other two poems had not been published before; they are reprinted in PP.
© G. Peter Winnington 2020
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