"Selected Poems", originally in Carcanet's "Signatures" series, has proven to be one of the most popular volumes of modern Welsh poetry, having gone through six printings in ten years. Gillian Clarke combines traditional skills with a highly individual voice. Hers is a unique perspective on Welsh history and on the role of women within a rich, and at times volatile, culture. "Her language has a quality both casual and intense, mundane and visionary", the "Listener" said of "Letter From a Far Country" (Carcanet 1982). "There is no gaudiness in her poetry; instead, the reader is aware of a generosity of spirit which allows the poems' subjects their own unbullied reality".