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Thanks to the kind permission of Evangeline Paterson’s literary executors, I’m delighted to have the opportunity to curate this taster of her poetry for The High Window, which is taken from Lucifer, With Angels (Dedalus Press, 1994), her Selected Poems. There’s a quote from Anne Stevenson on the back cover which still rings true today and provides an excellent introduction to her work:

There is an exhilarating wide-openness about Evangeline Paterson’s work. Free of mannerism and self-conscious effort, her poems flow naturally and unembarrassed from a lyrical source that is not untampered by wit. Evangeline Paterson keeps her balance without sacrificing her strength of feeling. Her poems are wise, very womanly, but they are never preachy. They are perfectly clear without lapsing into cliché or sentimentality. In a juster world, her books would sell in thousands; her popularity among those who still believe poetry can be a…