To make a testament is to attempt to pass on what matters most. In his seventh full-length collection of poems Robert Crawford writes of love, loss, belief, and commitment. Whether in intimate erotic lyrics or in a sustained engagement with the politics of Scottish independence he writes with passion, wit, and assurance about struggles to pass on values and treasures. The book opens with a sequence of love poems, and closes with 'Testament', a startlingly fresh gathering of deftly rhymed paraphrases based on the New Testament. Whether making versions of Cavafy or elegising fellow poet Mick Imlah, or writing how a father hands on a piece of marble to his son, Robert Crawford shows in Testament how poetry can communicate from generation to generation aspects of what makes us most vulnerably and engagingly human.

On the brink of the referendum on independence, the first collection in six years from this major Scottish poet

About the Author
Robert Crawford is a poet, biographer, critic and literary historian who has published eight full collections of poetry and many prose books, including two major biographies of T.S. Eliot: Young Eliot and Eliot After The Waste Land. Emeritus Wardlaw Professor of Poetry at the University of St Andrews, he is a Fellow of the British Academy, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and a Foreign Member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters. His poetry has been shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize, and he has won two Scottish Arts Council Book Awards as well as the Saltire Scottish Book of the Year Award.

Reviews
Crawford's poetic voice has a calm lucidity, never ostentatious or wilfully obscure... Poets are better with metaphors than politicians. -- Sarah Mansfield * Scotland on Sunday *



Book Information
ISBN 9780224098076
Author Robert Crawford
Format Paperback
Page Count 80
Imprint Jonathan Cape
Publisher Vintage Publishing
Weight(grams) 101g
Dimensions(mm) 199mm * 130mm * 8mm