Jorie Graham's poetry insists that "the visible world" exists: but what is its existence? Beyond the merely subjective, the merely lyric, she ventures with philosophical rigour into an area "saturated with phenomena", in Helen Vendler's phrase, a pla...

Irish literature exists in two languages. A dual approach is necessary if the tradition, with its historical, political and semantic tensions, is to be understood-indeed, if some of its features are to be appreciated at all. Separate Gaelic and Anglo...

A mixture of stories, poems and autobiography: the donkey survives the fire, and the poet survives in a northern world where the sun does not shine equally or often on all and where Postman Pat pens a suicide note, maddened by his theme tune, but kee...

"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...