Top 6 - David Green

I've been wondering about a new feature for this website for a while, with My Favourite Poem and Signed Poetry Books having run to a standstill. What we might try is Top 6, a selection of a poet's top six poems with brief notes about the selection process. And where better to begin than with me, myself, I. I'll put more poets on here as the weeks go by- for some reason I feel like doing Hardy next- but do feel free to contribute a piece if you feel like it. I'm always pleased to feature guest appearances.
In the meantime, anyone visiting here who wants to nominaste their favourite poem, please e-mail your choice, with some notes if you feel like it. And, of course, anyone with a signed book by T.S. Eliot, Auden or Larkin to add to my collection, please get in touch to arrange a convenient time to bring it round.

It's not possible that The Cathedrals of Liverpool could be as low as no.7 in any list of my best poems so we have to start with that prize-winning, iconic masterpiece ( ! ). It flowed from the biro onto the paper apparently unhindered by me and I was lucky to be holding the pen when it happened. Once in a blue moon things just happen to go so immacuately well. It wasn't even really my idea but I was grateful to be able to turn it into lines.
Piccadilly Dusk had a similarly beguiling effect on at least one kind reader and as a result these two poems were used in one of my more high profile magazine appearances, in the august pages of About Larkin.
From the latest book, TLOTGD, Everyday is surprisingly a springer in the market for me and currently exceeding my own expectations of it. But we need to consider the whole career and not just the latest pieces so Saturday Afternoon seems to me to still be doing all it ever wanted to do from all those years ago, certainly written in 1986 or before.
After that, it gets more difficult as several worthy poems with fine compositional ideas behind them queue up to occupy the remaining two places. I'm not going to try to fiddle it by mentioning the near misses but it might have been easier to have made it a top 7, or 10. I'll give it to Ovid's Waitress and Anagram.
But I am delighted that the poems since Re-read, the selected career retrospective published on my 45th birthday, have been an improvement on the poems in that book. Even if I say it myself.