That’s Ken Smith, whose attitude towards poetry, the craft of poetry and life in general, seems to me to have been exemplary. I met him at the end of the Eighties, at one of the regular workshops he ran as writer-in-residence at Essex University, where my brother Adrian was studying; Ken was kind and encouraging about the poem I brought.

Alas, I didn’t have any of his collections while he was alive, but I’ve belatedly caught up with much of his oeuvre. I especially like the posthumously published You Again (Bloodaxe, 2004; available here) because, as well as including his last poems, it contains interviews, prose pieces, and memories and assessments of, and poems for, him. I love the wisdom in the following two quotes from his prose.

Neruda says, If you want to learn to be a poet you must first learn to walk. It happens I like walking. Usually I find things, and with the rhythm of it I can think, and walking alone is best: the thought doesn’t have to be shared while you’re thinking it. More chance of thinking something out. Less chance of interruption.

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Serendipity has always been my way of working, more so as the years go by, as I learn to let go more. To be open to the incidental, to suggestion and association, constitutes for me most of the business of being a poet.

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Internationalist in outlook and influences, Ken’s poetry is characterised by a disciplined looseness, seriousness and dry humour; a winning combination if ever there was one. He was what used to be called a ‘public poet’, one whose opinions were sought because they were worth hearing. In our troubled times now, we could surely do with more poets like Ken.

Several of Ken’s books are still in print, here, including his Collected Poems which Bloodaxe published in 2018.

The Poetry Archive has two poems read by Ken, here.