The Poem

A tremendous achievement.

Don Paterson is one of the most talented poets working today; he is also an editor of poetry, a reader, someone intrigued by linguistics and philosophy and neurology, and is therefore the perfect polymath to write a book on how we read poetry ... ornery, profound, engaging, infuriating.

An intimidatingly exhaustive virtuoso performance.

By the end of The Poem, I found myself reading lines of poetry over and over, exploring with a new intensity their sense and sound, right down to the most seemingly inconsequential grammar mark or phoneme. That is a sign of a good teacher: someone who can help others improve their own understanding of the world.