Marratide : Selected Poems

William Martin (1925-2010) was a poet of extraordinary vision and musicality.Thoroughly grounded in his native North-East England, its pit communities and industry, his song-like poems nevertheless traverse a vast geographical and historical landscape ranging from deep Celtic and Anglo-Saxon sources to the mythology and sacred sites of India, via a passionate political engagement that never limits song to mere rhetoric.He also drew on children’s games, ballads and street songs in poems showing both political anger and a wider concern for a society losing its common ground, its rituals and rites of passage.Marratide: Selected Poems brings together poems from William Martin’s four collections, Cracknrigg (1983) and Hinny Beata (1987) from Taxus Press; and Marra Familia (1993) and Lammas Alanna (2000), from Bloodaxe Books.Two comprehensive introductory essays by editors Peter Armstrong and Jake Morris-Campbell discuss the life and poetry of William Martin in this edition published to celebrate his centenary.A QR code printed in the book links to archive audio recordings of poems read (and sung) by William Martin.