"If the recent German Zeitgeist could speak, it might sound a good deal like Michael Kruger", Richard Dove writes in his introduction to Diderot's "Cat", the first comprehensive selection of Kruger's poems in English. The poems are drawn from thirtee...

Two ambitious monologues form the core of Marius Kociejowski's first book: "Doctor Honoris Causa" and "Giacomo Leopardi in Naples". These and his shorter poems, including the sequence "The Wolf Month", reveal a poet with a fine lyrical and narrative...

With all his contradictions, Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926) is one of the fathers of modern literature and the Duino Elegies one of its great monuments. Begun in 1912 but not completed until 1922, they are "modern" in almost every sense the word has...

Janos Pilinszky (1921-1981) was a unique and compelling voice among the generation of European poets whose work bore first-hand witness to the horrors of war. The distinction of his poetry, as Ted Hughes argues, is both spiritual and artistic: "the d...

Devices and Desires is Dick Davis's selection from his three earlier books, together with twenty-three new poems. This collection by one of England's most original, yet traditional, poets demonstrates the range of themes which he commands, and the gi...

Revewing Sally Purcell's first collection of poems "The Holly Queen" (1971), Clive Wilmer spoke of "the ghostly music" and "diamantine elegance" of her poetry. These qualities are evident in this collection which continues to explore the mysteries of...

Tom Lowenstein's first full-length book of poems shows his development from meditative and hermetic earlier poems, through formalism to a mode of controlled ironic wildness, in which he explores in concrete detail the fantasies that emerge from metap...

Dragons contains Gavin Bantock's poems since the publication of "Eirenikon" (1972), together with a selection of his previously uncollected earlier poems. His new work – a series of gothic portraits from life, the fantasy-like sequence "Dragon World"...