When Adam Johnson, a young gay man from Cheshire, arrived in London in 1984, he possessed insatiable curiosity, irresistible charm and unfocused literary ambition; when he died nine years later, he had become one of the most accomplished English poets of his generation. This Collected Poems charts that astonishing transformation. Although slender as Collecteds go, it is compelling as a record of a few short years' serious writing. Johnson's poetic imagination, shaped by his close observation of the natural world, proved no less adept at dealing with the ironies and tragedies of urban life. A love of music, painting and literature - of cultural life in all its forms - is matched by a delight in human relationships: many of his poems are dedicated to lovers and friends, across the dinner table or at journey's end. His celebratory relish for lived experience remains undiminished even in his last poems. This edition is prepared largely from the author's signed typescripts and includes previously unpublished work.

ADAM JOHNSON was born in 1965, in Stalybridge, Cheshire. In 1984 he moved to London, where he worked for the BBC, a theatre-booking agency and a reference-book publisher. He self-published a small collection of poems, In the Garden, in 1986; later work appeared in magazines, anthologies, and three collections - Poems (Hearing Eye, 1992), The Spiral Staircase (Acumen, 1993) and The Playground Bell (Carcanet, 1994). NEIL POWELL was born in London in 1948.He was educated at Sevenoaks School, where he founded and edited the award-winning magazine Verve and wrote on jazz as a ‘young critic’ for The Daily Telegraph; and at the University of Warwick, where he read English and American Literature (BA, 1966–9) followed by postgraduate research on English Literature (MPhil, 1969–71).Between 1967 and 1970 he was editor of Tracks, and in 1969, while still an undergraduate, won a Gregory Award.He taught at Kimbolton School and St Christopher School, Letchworth, where he became Head of English; he was the founder-owner of The Baldock Bookshop in Hertfordshire; and since 1990 he has been a full-time author and editor, living in Suffolk. His books include eight collections of poetry – At the Edge (1977), A Season of Calm Weather (1982), True Colours (1991), The Stones on Thorpeness Beach (1994), Selected Poems (1998), A Halfway House (2004), Proof of Identity (2012) and Was and Is: Collected Poems (2017) – as well as Carpenters of Light (1979), Roy Fuller: Writer and Society (1995), The Language of Jazz (1997), George Crabbe: An English Life (2004), Amis & Son: Two Literary Generations (2008) and Benjamin Britten: A Life for Music (2013).He edited and introduced the Selected Poems of Fulke Greville (1990), the anthology Gay Love Poetry (1997), the Collected Poems of Donald Davie (2002) and the Collected Poems of Adam Johnson (2003). He has contributed to numerous journals and newspapers including Agenda, Critical Quarterly, Encounter, Gay Times, The Guardian, The Independent, The Listener, Literary Review, The London Magazine, New Statesman, PN Review, Poetry Review, The Spectator, The Sunday Telegraph and The Times Literary Supplement; to reference books such as British Writers, The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English, The Dictionary of Literary Biography, The Oxford Companion to Twentieth-Century Poetry and The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography; to various anthologies; and to BBC Radio 3 and Radio 4.He was for fifteen years Co-ordinating Editor of PN Review. Literary Agent Natasha Fairweather, Rogers Coleridge & White, 20 Powis Mews, London W11 1JN (020 7243 9517); [email protected]