Book description
Robin Robertson's fourth collection is, if anything, an even more
intense, moving, bleakly lyrical, and at times shocking book than
Swithering, winner of the Forward Prize. These poems are written with
the authority of classical myth, yet sound utterly contemporary: the
poet's gaze - whether on the natural world or the details of his own
life - is unflinching and clear, its utter seriousness leavened by a
wry, dry and disarming humour. Alongside fine translations from Neruda
and Montale and dynamic (and at times horrific) retellings of stories
from Ovid, the poems in The Wrecking Light pitch the power and wonder of
nature against the frailty and failure of the human. Ghosts sift through
these poems - certainties become volatile, the simplest situations
thicken with strangeness and threat - all of them haunted by the
pressure and presence of the primitive world against our own, and the
kind of dream-like intensity of description that has become Robertson's
trademark. This is a book of considerable grandeur and sweep which
confirms Robertson as one of the most arresting and powerful poets at
work today. 'Robin Robertson continues to explore the bleak, beautiful
territory that he has made his own. His stripped-bare lyricism, haunted
by echoes of folksong, is as unforgiving as the weather and poems such
as 'At Roane Head' show him writing at the height of his considerable
powers' The Times
Robin Robertson is from the north-east coast of Scotland. A
Painted Field won a number of awards, including the 1997 Forward
Prize for Best First Collection and the Saltire Scottish First Book of
the Year Award. His second collection, Slow Air, was published
in 2002 and he has received the E. M. Forster Award from the American
Academy of Arts and Letters. Swithering won the Forward Prize
for Best Collection.
