Sunday Herald, 5 January 2003
Probably our greatest living poet.
Review
'Elegies is probably the finest long poem of its kind since Tennyson's In Memoriam.' Jonathan Raban 'An enviable range of moods and measures, by turns wildly inventive, poignantly naked, dour, dramatic and funny.' Anthony Thwaite, Sunday Telegraph
Daily Telegraph, 1 February 2003
I have proof that Douglas Dunn is an excellent poet ... He has such a gift for finding the life within literature, as much as in things.
Product Description
A generous selection of poems from 'one of the most talented and interesting poets writing in English today' (Robert Nye).
In a distinguished poetic career, Douglas Dunn has won the Somerset Maugham Award, the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, the Hawthornden Prize and the Whitbread Book of the Year. New Selected Poems 1964-1999 draws substantially upon the entire range of Dunn's poetry, from Terry Street (1969) to The Year's Afternoon (2000), and confirms his place 'among the finest of our poets' (Melvin Bragg).
About the Author
Douglas Dunn was born in Inchinnan, Renfrewshire, in 1942 and lived there until he married at the age of twenty-two. After working as a librarian in Scotland and Akron, Ohio, he studied English at Hull University, graduating in 1969. He then worked for eighteen months in the university library after which, in 1971, he became a freelance writer. In 1991 he was appointed Professor in the School of English at the University of St Andrews. As well as ten collections of poetry, including Elegies (1985), The Year's Afternoon, The Donkey's Ears (both 2000), and New Selected Poems 1964-2000 (2003), Douglas Dunn has written several radio and television plays, including Ploughman's Share and Scotsman by Moonlight. He has also edited various anthologies, including Twentieth-Century Scottish Poetry (2006). Douglas Dunn has won a Somerset Maugham Award, the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, and has twice been awarded prizes by the Scottish Arts Council. In 1981 he was awarded the Hawthornden Prize for St Kilda's Parliament. In January 1986 he was overall winner of the 1985 Whitbread Book of the Year Award for his collection Elegies.