YES AND NO
Poems by William Scammell

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William Scammell was born in 1939 at Hythe, Hampshire. He left school at 15 and worked in a wide variety of jobs – including journalism and photography – before returning to full-time study as a mature student at Bristol University. Since then he has worked as an adult education tutor, first with the WEA in Gloucestershire, currently as Staff Tutor in Literature in Cumbria for Newcastle University’s Department of Adult Education. He is married, and has two sons. After many years of writing prose, he began writing poetry in the early 1970’s. Yes And No is his first collection.

Harry Chambers / Peterloo Poets

‘First, something just has to be said about the quality of the books that are coming from Harry Chambers / Peterloo Poets. They are a delight and superior to any paperbacks that I have seen recently from what are usually thought of as our leading publishing houses.’
Neil Curry / AMBIT (1979)

‘Harry Chambers continues to give remarkable value with his Peterloo Poets.’
Christopher Hope / LONDON MAGAZINE (June 1979)

‘Side Effects, beautifully produced and a pleasure to handle, is the most accomplished first book of poems I have come across in several years. Quite simply, it demands to be read.’
Charles Causley SW (May/June 1979)

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Death of Auden

Yes he was deeply unhappy
and will live as before with regret.
Queerly prescient his words will continue
to race round the track and be met

by these who also watch truth
white-coated on the tracks of skill:
one red hand holds the leash
the other the mercy-killer that kills.

Was he a great writer? Heigh
and ho: this way to the museyroom.
The world’s unjust, let’s merely say,
if he’s not in a limestone catacomb

housekeepered by Miss Gee in tights
valeted by friendly dons
Mozart from the stalactites
runic sermons round his bones.

Today in the middle of a dripping wood
the hush of pines held solid dark
as tangible a livelihood
as sunlight in a summer park.

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YES AND NO
Price £1.50 per copy post free
Cover illustration: PIERO di COSIMO, Profile of a Young Woman (Musée Condé, Chantilly).
Publication: JANUARY 1979 (56 pages laminated paperback)