Chords: New and Selected Poems by Raymond Crump

The eye is alert to beauty, in the singular instances by which it manifests itself. The language gathers round it until a completion is formed, an ending, a summation, frequently dominated by nouns, a final stasis. It is a felt thing, recognised rhythmically, as a simplicity which closes the issue. The small poem becomes something like a glyph.
—Peter Riley, from the afterword

Cover image: ‘Suspended Chord’ by Raymond Crump (2018). Pen and graphite on paper, 21 x 29.7cm.

Publication date: April 2020

Edition of 200 paperback and 75 hardback copies, of which 26 are signed and lettered a-z by the author, with a further 10 copies hors commerce specially bound and signed.

68pp.

Edited by Boris Jardine.

Typeset in Akzidenz-Grotesk and Adobe Caslon Pro, and risograph printed by Earthbound Press, London.

The first book from SSEA Press

Raymond Crump’s poems were first published in The English Intelligencer – a hugely influential avant-garde worksheet that ran between 1966 and 1968. A chapbook was published by the EEDIN Press, Saint Louis, in 1970. Writing of these early poems J.H. Prynne praised Crump’s delicate use of rhyme – ‘glances of sound as echoes of place & touch’. Part I of Chords selects from this early work. Part II presents 20 new poems, written since 2009.

Published in collaboration with Face Press. Risograph printed by Earthbound Press (web/insta), on acid-free paper. Available in paperback, hardback, and a signed limited edition.

Click here to download a PDF version of Raymond Crump’s Green Barrel Poems (St Louis, 1970).