The Night Bus

The Night Bus gathers Derek Sellen's poems from the past decade into a wide-ranging and carefully structured collection. Moving through themes of war, history, public life, ageing, art, music, and individual lives, the poems chart a journey from darkness toward light.

By turns satirical, elegiac, and compassionate, Sellen's work confronts violence and injustice while attending closely to moments of tenderness and renewal.

Accessible yet formally attentive, these poems offer a sustained reflection on memory, experience, and the enduring complexities of the human condition.

I enjoy these poems for their dry wit and puckish humour, for their empathy and rage, for their attention to detail and delicious word-choices. I enjoy the poet's sense of history, his cosmopolitan outlook, his lightly worn scholarship, and the ease with which he can slip into another persona and a different era.

- Ama Bolton, poet and blogger, founder barleybooks press, Fountain Wells poets

Throughout this haunting and complex collection Derek Sellen displays a rich gift for language which is unflinching. He never shies from the grave events that have shaped the world yet is able to bring to life, with telling details and compassion the trials of individuals caught in the maelstrom.

- Jocelyn Simms, poet, founder with Gordon Simms of Segora Poetry