Poems

Reprint of Tom's Leonard's first published book.

Many of the poems appear in his later books. The intention has been to copy this as accurately as possible, including any typos the original had.

Contents

11 The Other Side of the Ticket

12 Dream

13 Summer

14 Another Sunday-poem

15 Sweetheart

16 Patron of the Arts

17 Epitaph on an Introvert Wit

18 Television Advertisement

19 Little Jenny's Complaint (1)

20 Little Jenny's Complaint (2)

21 The Romantic

22 Hill Street

23 The Inner Melancholy of the Poet

24 Phallflower

25 The Psychopath

26 The Remark

27 similie please / say cheese

29-36 A Priest Came On At Merkland Street

38 She sells sea-shells

39 Psychiatrist

40 Words, for E.

41 This Island Now

42 Soft and Strong

43 The Voyeur

44 Honest

45 Landscape

47-50 The Performance

52 Perpetual Stasis

53 The Image

54 The Poetry Reading

55 Pyrrhic Victory

56 The Main Feature

57 Keep Right On

58 As Luck Would Have It

59 23rd Story

60 The Virgins

61 Storm Damage

62 I said

63 Full-frontal Astronauts

64 At the Employment Exchange

65 The Appetite

67-75 Six Glasgow Poems

76-79 Three Pollock Posters

Below is the description that been on back of the original book

Tom Leonard was born in Glasgow in 1944. He worked as a Civil Servant then as a sales assistant in a bookshop before entering Glasgow University as a student in 1967. He left two years later without completing his degree: a variety of clerical jobs followed. He currently works for the Post Office in London. He is married (and has one son).

It was during his term as a student at Glasgow University, when his poems appeared in university magazines, that his work began to draw some attention in Scotland. Poems subsequently appeared in established Scottish magazines, and samples of his work were broadcast several times on B.B.C. Radio. A local Glasgow publisher, Midnight Press, then published his "Six Glasgow Poems" and "A Priest Came on at Merkland Street", and both of these publications established the poet's reputation as one of the most talented and original young writers on the contemporary Scottish literary scene. After many readings in Glasgow and at successive Edinburgh Festivals, he was granted a literary award by the Scottish Arts Council in 1971.

A comprehensive selection of his work has been long overdue. This first "slim volume" will undoubtedly be welcome on many Scottish bookshelves; it will also, we are sure, further establish Tom Leonard's reputation beyond his native Scotland, and will provide a rewarding experience for all those throughout the British Isles who are interested in contemporary poetry.