In 1922 Ivor Gurney entered the Dartford asylum where he was to stay for the rest of his life. Only an occasional poem in a magazine was published and he died in 1937. In 1982 Collected Poems, edited by P.J. Kavanagh was published. Kavanagh produced the Collected and Selected Poems in 1982 and 1990. Gurney had put volumes of poetry together, as John Clare did a century earlier, without hope of publication. This collection is published to mark the 60th anniversary of Gurney's death.