Robert Crawford's new collection is an exhilarating celebration of the world he lives in: his family, his fellow Scots, his country and his country's languages. Beginning with a group of moving, renewing love poems to his wife, the book builds into a polyphonic hymn to life in all its aspects.
There is a powerful sense of communion and connection in The Tip of My Tongue: while singing the Scottish part of the planet, Crawford also embraces the rhythms of the whole circumference - from Perth, Scotland, to Perth, Australia - catching 'how Kincardineshire's sky's/Transvaalish, Budapesty, Santa Barbaran,/Zurich on a perfect day'.
These are poems that are convincingly earthed in the land and the language yet unafraid of spiritual, even religious notes; richly lyrical and passionate yet shot through with a humour and a vitality that is utterly engaging. As Liam McIlvanney wrote in the Sunday Herald, 'for intellectual range, emotional depth, and lexical shimmer, Crawford is unsurpassed among recent Scottish poets'.
| ISBN: | 9780224069687 |
| Publication date: | 10th April 2003 |
| Author: | Robert Crawford |
| Publisher: | Jonathan Cape an imprint of Random House |
| Format: | Paperback |
| Pagination: | 64 pages |
| Series: | Cape Poetry |
| Genres: |
Literary studies: poetry and poets |