In his lifetime Clive Staples Lewis (1898–1963) was a very popular author thanks to his fiction (stories for children – The Narnia Cycle, a space trilogy and a novel – Till We Have Faces), his theological and philosophical writings of various kinds (satirical, e.g. The Screwtape Letters; meditational, e.g. A Grief Observed; explanatory, e.g. The Four Loves) and – last but not least – his literary criticism. All his prose texts, characterized by lucid, clear and attractive style, by wit and dialectical bias, breadth of references and formidable erudition made him famous as a literary historian, a Christian apologist and a lecturer.

The fact that Lewis was also a poet, that he wrote poetry all his life and had some of it published is, however, not generally known. Even serious encyclopedic publications and companions to English literature rarely mention the fact. It might then mean that his poetry does not merit much praise, is considerably less interesting than his other work or insufficient in terms of material to be seriously studied. However, the latter is definitely not the case: over 180 short lyrical poems and four long narratives should not be ignored and, as has been pointed out in an essay on the language of his poetry, “there is room for a book-length study of Lewis's poems” (Huttar 1991: 86). Still, no matter whether the critical opinion of Lewis the poet is high or low, it is important for his readers to know what kind of poetry he wrote, what were its themes and characteristics of style.