Ransom, the new collection from Michael Symmons Roberts, is an intense and vivid exploration of liberty and limit, of what it means to be alive, and searches for the possibility of hope in a fallen, wounded world. The poems in Ransom display all the lyrical beauty and metaphysical ambition for which his work is acclaimed, but with a new urgency, a ragged edge to what the Independent described as his "dazzling elegance". At the heart of this new book are three powerful sequences - one set in occupied Paris, one an elegy for his father, and one a meditation on gratitude - that work at the edges of belief and doubt, both mystical and philosophical. The idea of ransom is turned and turned again, poem by poem, seen through the lenses of personal grief and loss, cinematic scenes, narratives of incarnation and atonement. This is a profound and timely book from one of our finest poets.
Michael Symmons Roberts was born in Lancashire in 1963. He has published six collections of poetry and won the Forward Prize, the Costa Poetry Award and the Whitbread Poetry Prize. As a librettist, his work has been performed in concert halls around the world. He has published two novels and is Professor of Poetry at Manchester Metropolitan University. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
Although it's not published until March, we have special permission to distribute copies early to you. Order here with 25% off for PBS Members.