MICK IMLAH

Mick Imlahs second and long-awaited collection The Lost Leader was published to acclaim in 2008, shortly before his early death in January 2009. The present retrospect connects the work of three decades, drawing upon Imlahs earlier full-length collection, Birthmarks (1988), but also including uncollected poems and previously unpublished work. The Lost Leader won the Forward Prize and revealed a poet of dazzling virtuosity, eloquence and subtlety - breaking through, as Imlah said of Edwin Muir (whose poems he selected in his last year) to a field of unforced imaginative fluency and an unexpected common cause. Edited by Mark Ford and with an essay by Alan Hollinghurst, the Selected Poems brings together the best work of a poet who can now be seen, with increasing clarity, as a lost leader of Scottish poetry in our time.

The New Penguin Book of Scottish Verse is the first anthology ever to offer a view over the entire history of Scottish history, extending from the 6th century to the end of the 20th, and representing each of its stylistic currents with clarity and verve. Acknowledged masters such as Robert Burns and Don Paterson are well represented, their work augmented by that of neglected and unknown writers. Throughout the volume, poetry in Gaelic, Latin and other languages is given in parallel text; poems in Scots are fully glossed. With its comprehensive, lively Introduction, this unique anthology - mingling Highland and Lowland, the religious and the profane, poems by kings and crofters - is the definitive guide to the whole poetry of Scotland.

Acknowledged masters such as Robert Burns and Don Paterson are well represented, their work augmented by that of neglected and unknown writers. Throughout the volume, poetry in Gaelic, Latin and other languages is given in parallel text; poems in Scots are fully glossed. With its comprehensive, lively Introduction, this unique anthology - mingling Highland and Lowland, the religious and the profane, poems by kings and crofters - is the definitive guide to the whole poetry of Scotland.