Product details

Imprint: Renard Press
ISBN: 9781804472422
Paperback • 160pp • £10
129 mm x 198 mm
17/02/27
Thema: DCF, AGN

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Natural Presences

Selected Poems

Molly Holden

Edited by John Greening

ISBN: 9781804472422
Paperback • 160pp
Published 17 February 2027

£10.00

Free UK delivery on orders over £25

Molly Holden was a wonderful writer in the mould of John Clare, Thomas Hardy and Edward Thomas, publishing two pamphlets and three full collections in her short life. She had a promising career ahead, but early-onset multiple sclerosis limited her mobility and her capacity to write. Yet this was also a spur to creativity, forcing her to look ever more closely at what she could see through her window – and whether portraying a favourite tree, a flock of birds or a remembered path, her illness is an unspoken presence.

Molly Holden’s was a name to watch, praised by Robert Lowell, anthologised by Philip Larkin, but it has slipped from the canon. To mark the centenary of her birth, John Greening has revisited her work and chosen a new selection, including poems from unpublished manuscripts discovered by her family. Natural Presences offers a fresh introduction to Holden’s work – it is time she was more widely recognised for the gentle power of her words.

About the author

Molly Holden (1927–1981) was a British poet known for her works portraying the natural world, publishing two pamphlets and three full collections in her lifetime, followed by a posthumous Selected Poems. Raised in Surrey and Wiltshire, she settled in Bromsgrove. A long battle with multiple sclerosis limited her mobility and halted what was otherwise promising to be a brilliant poetic career, although late in her life she won a Cholmondeley Award. Renard Press’s Natural Presences (ed. John Greening) marks the centenary of her birth with a fresh selection, aiming to restore her name to the canon.

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