By Robin Robertson
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Poetry
Another Night Before Christmas, Armour, Ballistics, Banjo, Better Than God, Fiere, Furniture, Grain, Hide Now, Hill of Doors, Interior Night, Love Poems, Misadventure, Nefertiti in the Flak Tower, November, One Thousand Nights and Counting, Sidereal, The Bees, The Christmas Truce, The Cloud Corporation, The Dark Film, The Divine Comedy, The Floating Man, The Havocs, The Mirabelles, The Overhaul, The Picador Book of 40, The Picador Book of Love Poems, The Seacunny, The Wrecking Light, WenceslasPoets
Annie Freud, Billy Collins, Carol Ann Duffy, Charlotte Greig, Clive James, Glyn Maxwell, Jackie Kay, John Glenday, John Kinsella, John Stammers, Katharine Towers, Kathleen Jamie, Lorraine Mariner, Paul Farley, Peter Forbes, Peter Porter, Rachael Boast, Richard Meier, Robin Robertson, Samantha Wynne- Rhydderch, Sean O'Brien, Timothy Donnelly, Various
The Wrecking Light
Robin Robertson
Robertson doesn’t give ground to the illusory comfort of the ordinary, and he has a sardonic humour of his own . . . poetry matters a good deal, though it has little obvious comfort to offer, just the compelling evidence of its own serious attention and its shaping impulse, which ought to be enough.
The Sunday Times
There is an acuity of loss in Robin Robertson’s work, both in the clarity in which it is expressed and in the sharp relief it throws on other things
The Financial Times
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Posted By Robin Robertson on Tuesday 13th Apr 2010
'At Roane Head', from The Wrecking Light, is the second in a series of narrative poems I've been writing over the past year - all of them set in fictional Scottish locations. They have some of the attributes of folk tales, and some of folklore's familiar, cheery themes: murder, rape, revenge, madness, physical deformity, witchcraft and the supernatural.
Monday 6th Jun 2011 07:42
On Roane Head
Beglamoured as I was with Roane Head,
I gave a copy to my daughter.
Adding notes to aid with quicken, hirpling and smoor;
a resume of selkies,
and a small photo of a cormorant en croix.
I knew she'd love it as I did:
that timeless place of mystery and myth,
the perfect story of life and death,
love and loss, suffering and vengeance;
yet only 60 lines
from it's cinematic opening
through an embered hearth of darkness
to the final twist.
Next day I saw the stapled sheets uncreased
and asked if she had tried it.
'No, ...not yet' she said,
feigning forgetfulness.
Later she did read it
dutifully,
while watching a recorded X-Factor
for the second time.
And said nothing.
I thought she'd love it as I did:
instantly, completely.
And now I ask myself:
Did I do this?
Thursday 24th Feb 2011 09:36
I have been "beglamoured" by this poem. The imagery is so strong and the emotion engendered is overpowering. The simplicity of the language is beautiful. I want to paint this poem. I am off to buy all Robertson'spoems.