Leslie Norris's personal seam of nature poetry is not a large one, but he works it with increasing sureness and pertinacity. In [Mountains, Polecats, Pheasants and other Elegies], he again emerges mainly as the ex-countryman for whom memories and sudden rediscoveries of country experience break in on the world of the indoors, or of mechanised civilisation, to bring regret at the increasing distance from us of the real world they represent. His best poems here—and they are very good indeed—come where he is poised between the harsh nature he reveres and the comforts he guiltily cherishes. 'Beachmaster' and 'Shadows' show him writing with splendid energy about marine and river life, too thoroughly immersed in what he is describing to be watching himself in case he is alienated from it by his indoor living. (p. 808)

Alan Brownjohn, "Scorch Marks," in New Statesman (© 1974 The Statesman & Nation Publishing Co...