New

Fin de fiesta: Últimos poemas

A selection of Clive’s last poems, translated into Spanish by Luis Castellví Laukamp

Just published (April 7th 2021) : a new book featuring twenty-one of of Clive James' late poems, translated into Spanish for the first time by noted academic Luis Castellví Laukamp. “Fin de fiesta: Últimos poemas” includes parallel text in English. This paperback edition is published by Editorial Pre-Textos of Madrid in their series La Cruz del Sur and is available from the usual on-line bookstores.

The publisher has posted a YouTube video presentation of the new book, in the form of a conversation between Laukamp and Prue James, who Laukamp introduces as the author's ‘widow and muse’. He and Prue recite the Spanish and English versions of Return of the Kogarah Kid. View the presentation in our “Video” section.

The Fire of Joy: Roughly 80 Poems
to Get by Heart and Say Aloud

Clive's first posthumous publication, The Fire of Joy
was released by Picador on October 1st 2020.

Clive James read, learned and recited poetry aloud for most of his life. In this book, completed before just before his death, he offers a selection of his favourite poems and a personal commentary on each.

In the last months of his life, his vision impaired by surgery and unable to read, Clive James explored the treasure-house of his mind: the poems he knew best, so good that he didn’t just remember them, he found them impossible to forget. The Fire of Joy is the record of this final journey of recollection and celebration. Enthralled by poetry all his life, James knew hundreds of poems by heart. In offering this selection of his favourites, a succession of poems from the sixteenth century to the present, his aim is to inspire you to discover and to learn, and perhaps even to speak poetry aloud.

In his highly personal anthology, James offers a commentary on each of the eighty or so poems: sometimes a historical or critical note on the poem or its author, sometimes a technical point about the poem’s construction from someone who was himself a poet, sometimes a personal anecdote about the role the poem played in his own life.

Whether you’re familiar with a poem or not — whether you’re familiar with poetry in general or not — these chatty, unpretentious, often tender mini-essays convey the joy of James’s enthusiasm and the benefit of his knowledge. His urgent wish was to share with a new generation what he himself had loved. This is a book to be read cover to cover or dipped into: either way it generously opens up a world for our delight.