Chris McCabe

Published by small press Penned in the Margins - which is based in East London. This is a book about Tower Hamlets - the graveyard, one of the large Victorian spaces that edge the city (or at least, the city's boundaries as they were then).

The author is a poet, and also a librarian. He tries to track (with mixed results) poets that were buried in the now very green and overgrown space, much used by the public. None of them I'd come across, and for some, the only evidence they wrote poetry is on the gravestone. For me the book was most interesting when the author wrote about William "Spring" Onions, a celebrity poet due to his dramatic conversion to teetotalism after multiple drunk and disorderly charges. He chose to have his poems recorded by reappearing every year at the magistrate's court, to "celebrate" his new sobriety.

Not a conventional read, but may be of particular interest if you like poetry and history of London.… (meer)