WORRY BEADS
Poems by Anthony Edkins

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Worry beads are things Greeks handle to prevent their worrying about things. Anthony Edkins, using as his Worry Beads what could be called syllabic sonnets, offers us, not so much a sequence as a set of poems thematically allied – and the theme is a large one: quotidian life, qualified by snatches of nostalgia and intimations of mortality.

Anthony Edkins was born in Cheshire in 1927 but, except for five-year spells in both Spain and the U.S.A., he has lived in London since 1950. His poems have been published on both sides of the Atlantic; he also translates from the Spanish, and has been the co-editor and translator of The Poetry of Luis Cernuda (New York University Press).

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This Self

This self that I inhabit is my self.
I should be master in it, as secure
as leaseholder with ninetynine year lease
and yet it often seems to me more like
a quaint museum piece in some ghost town
through which I tread with extreme care in case
I raise the dust or dead, or awaken
some unexpected sleeping chimera.
But these unquiet spirits I defer to
are my own nostalgic familiars
who should be subject to my self.
I must people it again with substance
and dismiss my self-appointed suitors
before I’m exiled to the realms of myth.

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WORRY BEADS
Price £4.95 per copy post free (£3.30 post free to Associate Members)
Publication: 1976 (36 pages laminated paperback)