Much of Bunting's standing as a poet rests on the reception of Briggflatts. On its publication in 1966 Cyril Connolly described it as ‘the finest long poem to be published in England since T. S. Eliot's Four Quartets'. The success of Briggflatts lifted Bunting out of the obscurity into which he had fallen in the post-war years. It prompted the re-publication of earlier work which allowed readers and critics to evaluate the poet's wider oeuvre. For many, Briggflatts brought about the ‘discover/ of an English poet who had drifted perilously close to becoming an exotic footnote. It is interesting for a moment to compare Bunting's late success with that of the novelist Jean Rhys whose Wide Sargasso Sea (1966) brought sudden fame at the age of 76. Both writers had begun their careers in the 1920s, both writers had been part of literary bohemia, both writers had been in different ways associated with Ford Madox Ford, one of the galvanizing forces of modern literature. If Briggflatts is the culmination of Bunting's poetic career, the subsequent collection of his work has created a vibrant body of writing spanning some forty years which invites us to re-consider the fault lines that have separated native traditions from more experimental practice. A student of Bunting's work is able to recognize an exemplary dedication to craft and technique which not only reveals a rigorous engagement with modernist poetics but shows how the poet was an intuitive reader of the English tradition. In his post- Briggflatts lectures the poet considers, inter alia, the significance of Northumbrian art, Wyatt, Spenser and Wordsworth. Bunting was also interested in sung ballads and the oral culture of the north-east. Complete Poems (2000), rather in the way of a case study, demonstrates the process by which a master craftsman becomes sui generis the master of his art. It includes previously uncollected poems yet maintains a lean muscularity and we know that he wrote a great many poems he later destroyed. Bunting argued that the poet's most important tool was the waste-paper basket.

His resurrection in the 1960s ensures his status in any narrative concerning British modernism. Bunting also made a charismatic contribution to what Eric Mottram called the British Poetry Revival.