Book description
Taken from his first six books, these poems confirm Robert Crawford
as a poet of exhilarating energy wedded to a constantly refreshing
delight in nuanced language. Richly nourished by his background,
Crawford's work is both lyrical and wry. Its intelligent humour and
attunement to our technological present are impressively fused with a
deepening note of spirituality. Unpredictable yet recognisable, these
are poems of beguiling vitality.
While readers have praised Crawford's lovingly lyrical engagement
with politics and science in such collections as A Scottish
Assembly (1990) and Spirit Machines (1999), with gender in
Masculinity (1996), or with environment and spirituality in
The Tip of My Tongue (2003), what emerges in this Selected
Poems is a clearly growing commitment to the protean delight of
poetry itself: a belief in its uniqueness as a medium which can subtly
sound out complex relationships with heartfelt intelligence. In
Crawford's language there is a confidently contemporary Scottish music
that celebrates a kinship between the cherished, minute detail, local
or personal, and the magnificently universal, 'As a candle-flame
believes in the speed of light'.
Robert Crawford is the author of six poetry collections, including
Spirit Machines
which won a Scottish Arts Council Book Award and most recently,
The
Tip of My Tongue
. He has also co-edited two major recent anthologies,
The Penguin
Book of Poetry from Britain and Ireland since 1945
, and
The New Penguin Book of Scottish Verse
, and published many works of criticism. He teaches at the University of
St Andrews.
