The first volume of the collected poems of Steve Smith... rescued from notebooks... dug from ditches... plucked from trees... 'live' favourites and the obscure... love, politics, and the dreamworld... twenty-one years of life and thought...The poems that have been selected for 'Now and Then' form something like a 'Greatest Hits' double album, says the author, covering the years 1987-2008. Personal themes of love and longing, political and social rage, and a seeking for the mythic, the mystical, characterise these lyrically honest, deeply engaging poems. Influenced by singer-poets such as Dylan, Cohen and Roy Harper, as much as by Percy Bysshe Shelley and William Blake, folktale and legend, these poems present an authentic, original voice, whether it be skillfully depicting and defining a moment, criticising politics or society, or taking the reader upon a journey into a dream. Poems of love are naked. And there's some rock and roll too! The cover is by Benjamin Akira Tallamy, with thanks.