The 1970s

Abstract

In this chapter I want to look at three poems by poets who had established reputations before the 1970s, but whose work reached a maturity during that decade which confirmed them as distinctive voices. I have chosen a poem by Seamus Heaney which was first published in the 1960s and included in his Selected Poems 1965– 1975. Death of a Naturalist was the title poem of his first book, published in 1966, and was very widely anthologised through the 1970s. It has become one of the ‘set pieces’ for teachers and examiners as an ‘unseen poem’ for practical criticism. I have also chosen poems by Dannie Abse and Leslie Norris who are two of our most accomplished poets and writers of fiction. Both men had written from their early twenties, but their best work began to appear in the 1970s. All three writers have a body of work which has rested heavily on autobiography, the detailed description of actual places and events, but which is also capable of surprising, at times, surreal effects.