Poetry
Category: Poetry, Poetry Anthologies
Number of pages: 128
ISBN: 9781854115812
Publication date: March 27, 2012
Price: £12.99
Out of stock
Carol Rumens’s poem of the week ‘Coram’s Cloth’ by Tony Curtis (Guardian online 30th April 2012)
“…a delightful, moving anthology…” – The Tablet
Tokens for the Foundlings is an anthology of poetry about childhood published for the benefit of the Foundlings Museum in London, with royalties paid to it. The museum, established by tradesman and ship owner Thomas Coram in 1739 with the support of Hogarth and Handel, was both the first orphanage in Britain and the first public art gallery. It has an ongoing programme of art exhibitions and other events, an educational programme and has an art collection which includes Hogarth and Gainsborough (another supporter) and a collection of manuscripts, books and libretti by Handel.
The book is divided into three sections concerning orphans and foundlings, infancy, and early childhood and includes poems by Gillian Clarke, Carol Ann Duffy, Helen Dunmore, Stephen Knight, Don Paterson, Elaine Feinstein, Dannie Abse, Seamus Heaney, David Harsent, Carol Rumens, Kate Bingham, Michael Longley and George Szirtes among many other, all of whom have donated their work.
Childhood and parenting are enduring themes for poets and Tokens of the Foundlings offers a unique entry into these subjects through moving and beautiful poems. The foreword is by author and journalist Daisy Goodwin, and the book’s cover features a Foundlings museum artwork by Tracey Emin. This book is to be launched at the museum, and events are planned at a number of literary festivals around Britain.
www.foundlingmuseum.org.uk
Tony Curtis
Poet, critic, essayist, expert on Welsh Art, Tony Curtis was born in Carmarthen in West Wales in 1946. He studied at Swansea University and Goddard College, Vermont. He is the author of numerous collections of poetry, including his latest: From the Fortunate Isles: New and Selected Poems. He has also written volumes of critical work on poets and artists and edited popular anthologies of poetry. He is Emeritus Professor of Poetry at the University of South Wales, where he established and was Director of the MPhil in Writing for many years. He has been elected to the Royal Society of Literature and has toured widely reading his poetry to international audiences.
