NEW COLLECTED POEMS

First edition, first printing. Signed by the author. Quarter green cloth over cream marbled boards, lettered in gilt to the spine. Complete with matching slipcase. A fine copy, the binding square and firm, the boards bright and fresh. The contents are clean throughout and without previous owner's marks. The slipcase is also in fine condition. Scarce.

One of a limited edition of 125 copies specially bound and signed by the author; 15 copies, numbered I-XV being reserved for author and publisher, 110 copies numbered 1-110 available for sale. This example is number 43. Based on the 1995 'Collected Poems', John Montague's 'New Collected Poems', edited by Peter Fallon, incorporates revisions, additional poems, and the contents of three further collections, 'Smashing the Piano' (1999), 'Drunken Sailor' (2004) and 'Speech Lessons' (2011). As Fallon writes in his note at the back of the book, the volume's arrangement "reflects the pattern of a lifetime's dedication: [and] has more than ever the look of a masterpiece." Montague (1929 2016) was born in Brooklyn, New York, moving to Ireland at the age of four and growing up in Ulster. Although a quintessentially Irish poet, Montague was very much a European figure, spending many years living in Paris, where he was a regular drinking companion of Samuel Beckett. In his 'Irish Times' review of this generous volume, Harry Clifton remarks upon this cultural breadth, describing Montague "less as an Ulster precursor and more, like [...] Beckett, [...] an Irish universalist", the poems, however, "circling and returning, in word and act, to Ireland" and "a Tyrone landscape endlessly invoked, like Beckett's Dublin hinterland." In 1998, Montague became the first occupant of the Ireland Chair of Poetry, and in 2010 was made a Chevalier de la Legion d'honneur, France's highest civil award.