A High Calling or Where Do You Get Your Ideas From?
Sharing what he’s learnt during half a century’s creative work, John Greening gives us an insight into the life of a poet, playwright, editor, reviewer, teacher and performer. Eminently readable, amusing and informative, A High Calling is a rich resource for anyone with an interest in good writing.
Navigating a wide-ranging career, including a spell as a children’s magician and a time at the BBC with musicologist Hans Keller, as well as years spent living in Upper Egypt, we are taken on a journey around the globe and through time and literature. With an extraordinary cast of poets, including correspondence with Ted Hughes and a meeting with Seamus Heaney at Little Gidding, Greening paints a compelling portrait of the lives behind the writers we meet.
Rich in anecdote and literary insight and interwoven with autobiographical sketches and original poems, A High Calling is anything but lofty in its approach, and is chock-full with down-to-earth advice for readers and writers.
‘A poet whose unbounded curiosity has taken him through the wide (and often conflicted) world with a passion for details that root his work in place.’
Jay Parini (on The Interpretation of Owls)
John Greening
John Greening is recipient of several major prizes and a Cholmondeley Award. Beyond the many collections represented in The Interpretation of Owls: Selected Poems 1977–2022 (ed. Gardner), he has produced anthologies and editions of major poets. Having lived in Egypt, Scotland and New Jersey, he and his family have settled in East Anglia.
Author portrait © Adrian Bullers
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