Product details
Biographical note
Drew Milne was born in Edinburgh in 1964 and grew up in Scotland. He lives and works in Cambridge with his wife, Redell Olsen, and two children. In 1995 he was Writer in Residence at the Tate Gallery, London. His books of poetry include Sheet Mettle (1994), Bench Marks (1998), The Damage (2001), Mars Disarmed (2001), and Go Figure (2003), and, with John Kinsella, Reactor Red Shoes (2013). He edited Marxist Literary Theory (1996), with Terry Eagleton, and Modern Critical Thought (2003). Since 1997 he’s been the Judith E. Wilson Lecturer in Drama & Poetry at the University of Cambridge.'This is a book to live in and grow in, and through. One for the big list, until the end of our time.'
Manchester Review of Books
'This is a stirring, generous, probing collection, sure-minded, steady under fire (including from its own satirical reflection), devastatingly clear about the devastations all will face, which so many suffer now, here in this world: ethical poetry of the highest order, looking you direct in the eye, from the several vantage-points of its many levels of engagement with the predicament, advocate-activist, searchingly political, witty and intellectual, metaphysical, Scottish, European, Marxist-ecological - a collection to savour (and then read again) as we move through into the bad times.'
Adam Piette, Blackbox Manifold
'Milne thrives on both formalism and Marxism, but both are subservient to a wit and musicality that makes these dense, complex poems both readable and challenging.I love the fluidity of the language: this is poetry to read aloud, listening to the syntactical slipperiness, the echo and sustain of its music. This, for me has always been Milne's major strength.'
Stride Magazine
'Milne's poetic universe is suffused with a sharp awareness of the objects of mass consumption... A hectic and broken world leaves its bloody marks on his poems, where history is a butcher putting his finger on the scales.'
David Lau, Lana Turner Journal
'Witty juxtaposition jostles with an unerring lyrical voice and an underlying ethical base which proves that the analytical mind can co-exist with that of the imaginative artist'
Steve Spence, 'Technicians of Sensibility'
'...here is where Milne's constructivist nature requires culture to complete itself, even as historical thought moves towards manifesto. As with the demands of lyric to be expressive song, all this woven space-time is highly compressed [...]Coming at mid-career, this volume of collected poems already demonstrates a furtherance of collectivities in utilizing the particular word for creative instrumentalities that develop critical thought, proof that the lyric poem can implement intelligent social policy.'
Marjorie Welish, Chicago Review