Collected Poems 1975-2020

Ken Edwards edited Reality Studios magazine, 1977-88, and founded Reality Street Editions with Wendy Mulford in 1993. He ran the press until it ceased publishing new books in 2016. He currently runs Grand Iota with Brian Marley, dedicated to new prose writing. As well as his poetry, collected here, he has published three novels and other works of imaginative prose, including his memoir of the 1970s, Wild Metrics. He lives in St Leonards on Sea, England, where from time to time he plays bass guitar with the band Afrit Nebula.


"Whether we engage with its shifting terms, try to keep time to its cross-rhythms, or gaze in wonder at its aporia, Edwards's poetry is constantly alive, responding triumphantly to every approach.... If anyone is still in doubt as to whether British poetry can equal the powerful innovation of the great American contemporaries, they should read Edwards immediately. He has the rare gift of being able to change the way we perceive both everyday and global reality." -Peter Maber, PN Review [on No Public Language]

These poems are written as if with the voice of a flaneur with a walkman. The inspiration and stimulant of music give the lines a jazzy freedom, the reader bobbing along to a quirky image-rhythm. Elsewhere, lines throb with the vibrancy and violence of city life, as Edwards explores scenes of stabbings, mob riots and 'TV's frozen music' in the heads of anonymous city walkers.... his understanding and dexterity in placing 'new stuff' over existing grids consistently produces startling and more-ish formulations. -Gareth Farmer, Signals [on No Public Language]

Ken Edwards has produced a book as energetic and witty as it is serious in its send-up of contemporary culture. Edwards absorbs and transforms current lingo (especially computerspeak) with a near-perfect ear. -Marjorie Perloff [on eight + six]

The sonnets are made to swallow a mass of unedifying material from the world of corporate finance and business management, from new information technologies, and from bleak despoliated landscapes. Against the stultifying influence of contemporary public discourse, the vitality and playfulness of the sonnets are liberating. -Peter Howarth in The Modern Sonnet [on eight + six]