Beyond the Last House

This is Robert Etty’s sixth collection with Shoestring Press. His poems first appeared in literary magazines in the 1980s, and, though they occasionally stray elsewhere, they focus on the people and landscapes of his home county of Lincolnshire.

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‘Planes Flying Over is a wonderful collection, full of clever, witty, well-crafted poems covering a panoply of ordinary human predicaments. Etty’s humanity and affection for frailties and eccentricities shine through. He has maintained the high standard he has set himself over the years, with no sense of weariness or of mining the familiar for its own sake. If you don’t know his poetry, start with this and work backwards. It’s a constant delight.’ – Malcolm Carson, The High Window

‘One of Etty’s early collections was called New Pastorals, a phrase which may be the clearest generic summary of his work, not only in content, but in the seamless combination of the oxymoronic, the clashes of everyday surprises and contradictions – in a language that is self-reflexive and precise. The poems in Passing the Story Down the Line are as likely to find inspiration and significance in The Lone Ranger or ’60s pop records as they are in a glade of bluebells or ‘Brigg Fair’, but each is a fascinating archaeology, grim or amusing, weighing the memories and needs of human ecology, and always thoroughly modern in style.’ – Phyll Smith, New Walk