Candlestick Press Knihy

These ten poems, selected and introduced by Don Paterson, offer a taste of the poetry of Scotland. Some explore ideas around identity and change, exile and belonging. Others focus on landscape and place, or are principally about language itself. As Don Paterson writes in the Introduction, Scottish poets “…excel, I think, at the anti-baroque: leaving words standing so sharp and stark and bold on the page that you can hear the wind whistle round them.” There is plenty of warmth and humanity here too and, to borrow from Burns, a joyous absence of anything too Rigidly Righteous.

Ten Poems from Wales offers readers who are new to the poetry of Wales, and those who are already in love with it, a glimpse of a rich heritage. Welsh literature is renowned for its beauty, as well as its profound influence on the writings of other cultures.The ten poems, chosen by Gillian Clarke, range from the seventh to the twenty-first centuries, and give the reader a taste of an ancient and continuing literature. Hedd Wyn’s ‘Rhyfel’ (‘War’) is included in its original Welsh form, as well as in translation. Two of the poems, by Paul Henry and Gillian Clarke herself, are previously unpublished.