Introduction

Andrew and i have known each other for almost forty three years a we first met over a nervous pint of guineas after a bibliography lecture during our first year as graduate students in oxford. Ah, thrilling to be one of the greatest interiors in london, but also slightly intimidating. We're celebrating andrew's fourteenth book of poems, essex clay,. A something which is, to me, and i think to anyone who's read it, feels thrillingly inovtive. But which is also a continuation, and I think, perhaps a resolution, of something that’s been going on in his work over the whole time that i've known him.