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Robin Robertson
A Painted Field Picador £6.99

	There is a marvellous precision of language in the poems in A Painted Field. Across a whole range of subjects – defrosting a fridge, a hill fort – Robin Robertson pins down moments of unease or wonder. Many of the poems are deceptively short, like ‘New Gravity’; slicing open an experience to reveal something of what lies within it and always observing or questioning. His collection finishes with the sequence ‘Camera Obscura’ – the imagined diary of a Victorian photographer interleaved with poems of contemporary Edinburgh. The effect is of two worlds casting light and shadow on each other; bringing to life the uncertainties and energy of 19th Century Scotland. Click here to return to the list of Next Generation Poets

New Gravity

Treading through the half-light of ivy
and headstone, I see you in the distance
as I’m telling our daughter
about this place, this whole business:
a sister about to be born,
how a life’s new gravity suspends in water.
Under the oak, the fallen leaves
are pieces of the tree’s jigsaw;
by your father’s grave you are pressing acorns
into the shadows to seed.

from A Painted Field

Biography
Robin Robertson is from the north-east of Scotland. His first volume of poetry, A Painted Field, won the Forward Prize for Best First Collection, the Aldeburgh Poetry Festival prize and the Saltire Society Scottish First Book of the Year Award. His second collection, Slow Air, was published by Picador in 2002. He is Deputy Publishing Director of a London publishing house. In 2004 he was awarded the EM Forster award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.