"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...

Sue Stewart's first collection introduces a poet of lyric intensity who writes with a vivid aural and visual imagination. Her poems effortlessly bridge the real, the surreal and the mythic as they engage with both personal life and the natural world,...

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...

"Time Signatures" is Chris McCully's first book of poems. It reflects his fascination – as student, scholar and theorist with the procedures of writing verse, especially with rhythmical and metrical structures. The subject-matter here is drawn from t...

Robert Duncan's profound appeal as a writer, and as a mentor to very different kinds of poets, suggests the vigour, various charm and scope of his work. He is certainly a poet aware – in his themes and his expansive techniques – of his radical creati...

Norm's wry, expansive poems tell stories, and his characters, ancient and modern – prophets, emperors and cabbies -address the old, unanswered questions with their lives, their failures and losses, their unanticipated moments of love. He shares the s...

John Clare (1793-1864): Born the son of a thresher at Helpston, Northamptonshire, John Clare is a rural poet and story teller. He is a poet of spiritual originality, as compelling at his best as Crabbe and Wordsworth as a story teller in verse. He wa...

Dennis O'Driscoll's third collection contains some of his most accomplished work to date, written with his characteristic blend of poignancy and dry wit. The book is notable for its engagement with contemporary life in both its benign and brutal aspe...

"The King of Britain's" Daughter was specially commissioned as the text of an oratorio for the 1993 Hay on Wye Festival, and is based on the story in the "Mabinogion" of Branwen, the daughter of Llyr. Family legend associated the story with Fforest,...

Not only the migrating birds speak in "Translations from the Natural World". The imprisoned species of pigs use their slum language; ravens, cuttlefish, sunflowers and a shell-back tick are among those non-verbal members of our natural world which fi...