Long Shadows

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'Wake up, Hall! There'll be plenty of time After this lesson for your poetry stuff.' Sniggerings from the back. An urgent rhyme Jumps on my mind and drives old Euclid off. Those are the opening lines from one of J. C. Hall's later poems, Curriculum Vitae, recalling his boyhood stirrings as a poet. His first published outing could hardly have been more auspicious, it was in a volume he shared with Keith Douglas and Norman Nicholson. Those two poets have long been on the Faber list: after all these years it a pleasure to welcome J. C. Hall to the fold. Long Shadows: Poems 1938-2002 , in the author's words, 'is not a collected poems in the sense of containing everything I've written and published, but a comprehensive selection of poems which seem, in their various ways, worth preserving.' Don't be misled by his characteristic modesty, these poems are very much 'worth preserving'. When reviewing the first edition of this volume, Vernon Scannell referred to J. C. Hall's 'considerable gifts' going on to say, 'it is interesting to watch the development of a talent that has always been rooted firmly in the great tradition of English lyrical poetry' in a 'tone . . . rather like that of a mo

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