THE words of one of Darlington's most famous sons came home yesterday when a book of his poetry was launched in the town.

Ralph Hodgson was a fashionable name in the years leading up to the First World War, courted by writers such as TS Eliot and Siegfried Sassoon, but because of his reclusive nature he is largely forgotten today.

Yesterday, though, the first collection of his works for more than 40 years was published, with two of his great-nieces in the audience at Darlington Crown Street library.

They are Margaret Pitt, from Marske-by-the-Sea in east Cleveland, and Wendy Kemp, who lives in Darlington.

"It's really exciting," said Ms Kemp.

"He's so well known in America, where he settled, and it is a shame that he's not better known here in the North-East, especially as this is an area that likes to celebrate its heritage.

Hodgson was born in Garden Street, off Northgate, in 1871, but following a calamitous collapse of his father's business affairs, the family left town in the 1890s. He found work first as a Fleet Street cartoonist and then fame as a poet. He went to lecture in Japan and then settled in the US where he died in 1962, having never completed his last poem, which he had been working on for 40 years.

"His are very emotional, lyrical poems that celebrate nature and life," said John Harding, the researcher who has edited the collection, The Last Blackbird. Mr Harding, from London, has been working for 15 years on a biography of Hodgson, which he hopes to publish next year.

* The Last Blackbird and Other Poems by Ralph Hodgson is published by Greenwich Exchange for £7.95.