Ever since he was an undergraduate, Brian Cox, editor of the "Black Papers on Education" (1969-1977), chairman of the National Curriculum English Working Group which led the Cox Report, and founder-editor of "Critical Quarterly", has been a poet. To mark his retirement as John Edward Taylor Professor of English at Manchester University, Carcanet have published his "Collected Poems", including work from his previous books "Every Common Sight" (1981) and "Two-Headed Monster" (1985) as well as new poems. The poetry has the virtues of his autobiography "The Great Betrayal: Memoirs of a Life in Education" (1992). The poems come to rest in relationship, in celebrations of marriage and the stabilities of abiding love.