Against Gravity: the title alludes to our struggle with mortality as we age and, by contrast, the pleasures of play, imagination, creativity. Robert Saxton's latest poetry book is dedicated to a friend whose heart gave out on a Scottish mountain. But in counterpoint to the elegaic, it offers humour too, often with dark overtones.

The subject matter is wide-ranging - from the late Queen to the pitfalls of indexing, from Nero's theatre to trouser suits for modern brides, from a bat roost in a Portuguese library to the Hollywood Sign. The book concludes with a visit to Vita Sackvillle-West's garden at Sissinghurst, exploring intergenerational friendship as well as Vita's visionary genius and unconventional love life. Wherever his focus falls, Saxton shows accomplished craftsmanship and an eye for telling detail, with surprises on every page.

Poems of mortality and play

About the Author

Robert Saxton was born in Nottingham in 1952. He read English at Magdalen College, Oxford, where he met his friend David Best, to whose memory this book is dedicated. He lives in north London and is currently a freelance editor and writer. He is the author of eight previous books of poetry and in 2001 won the Keats-Shelley Memorial Association's poetry prize for 'The Nightingale Broadcasts'.

Book Information
ISBN 9781915048325
Author Robert Saxton
Format Paperback
Imprint Two Rivers Press
Publisher Two Rivers Press