Selected Poems

'WHENEVER I MEET HIS POEMS, I'M ALWAYS STRUCK BY THEIR UNDATED FRESHNESS, EVERYTHING ABOUT THEM AS ALIVE, AS NEW AND AS ESSENTIAL AS EVER. ' Ted Hughes Norman MacCaig - who died in January 1996 aged 85 prompting a flood of obituaries and retrospectives - is one of the most popular contemporary poets of the English language. Chatto has published all of MacCaig's collections since 1954, but the only book of his now in print is the large COLLECTED POEMS. This new SELECTED POEMS, edited and introduced by Douglas Dunn, includes his poetry from over forty years and some hitherto uncollected poems, and is the standard, indespensible introduction to his work. It shifts easily between the lochs and mountains of the highlands and the cityscapes of Edinburgh; between hauntingly beautiful love poems and poems about what MacCaig called the 'unemphatic marvels' of the natural world- herons, kingfishers, swans trout, toads. SELECTED POEMS will introduce MacCaig's work to a new generation of readers, and will become an essential volume for those who already love his work.