For his Selected Poems C. H. Sisson chooses more than fifty pieces from seven collections of poetry, the selection ranging from short savage epigrams and squibs, lyrics and eclogues, to long meditative works such as 'Burrington Combe' and 'In Insula Avalonia'.

The poems follow a rough chronology of composition, opening with the harsh verses written when the poet was serving in the North West Frontier Province and ending near his home ground, in Somerset.

'My beginnings,' he has written, 'were without facility, and when I was forced into verse it was through having something not altogether easy to say . . . The writing of poetry is, in a sense, the opposite of writing what one wants to write.'