In over twenty poetry collections since 1982, John Greening has explored subjects as varied as Egypt, Captain Scott, WWI, classical music, Ben Jonson and Heathrow airport, but he has kept returning to the landscape of a quintessentially English (and technically non-existent) county. His well-received Huntingdonshire Eclogues of the late 1980s were followed a decade later by Huntingdonshire Nocturnes and, another ten more years after that, the Huntingdonshire Elegies.

On a cold Boxing Day walk in 2017, while the ferocious storm, the 'Beast from the East' prowled the land, his Huntingdonshire Codices began to come together, and what had been a trilogy turned into a quartet.

Formed of sixty fifteen-line stanzas, this haunting and consistently entertaining collection can be read like a journal, tracking lines of thought through time and space, painting detailed, witty and moving pictures of a countryside and life that lie unchanged, even through periods of great upheaval – political, ecological and cultural.



'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.'



'I much enjoyed and admired this book: the way John keeps the past and the present to hand and gives telling evidence of both; evidence, too, of the domestic quotidian as a crucial part of the story he tells; and the fens as a familiar, dark backdrop.'



'In his hands the tercet is capable of a fine range which includes bold humour, subtle wit and delicate emotion. Throughout the sequence ingenuity is apparent, but never pushes for attention in its own right.'



An exhilarating read. John Greening is master of his craft.



If you had to convince a fair-minded sceptic that English poetry is alive and well, and you were allowed only one example to make your case, and it had to be a book published in this country in 2024, a good choice would be John Greening's From the East: 60 Huntingdonshire Codices.