Bunting: The Shaping of His Verse

Basil Bunting (1900-1985) is now recognized as one of the most important twentieth-century British poets. This study is the first book-length analysis of his life and poetic achievement. Makin focuses particularly on the saints and warriors that occupy a central position in Bunting's masterpiece, Briggflatts, and on the forms of music and of Northumbrian painting and writing that help determine its structure. This study reveals Bunting as a major figure both in the development of modernism and of twentieth-century poetry as a whole. Oxford University Press is also publishing Bunting's Uncollected Poems.