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Intimate Expanses: XXV Scottish Poems 1978-2002

Edited by Robyn Marsack and Ken Cockburn

Intimate Expanses cover
Imprint: Carcanet Poetry
Publisher: Carcanet Press
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  • Intimate Expanses is an anthology of twenty-five Scottish poems, one for each year from 1978 to 2002, published by the Scottish Poetry Library in collaboration with Carcanet Press. Containing a comprehensive, insightful introduction by Ken Cockburn, this unique book presents an alternative view of how the past quarter century has unfolded in Scotland. Poems range from the grand and historical to the quiet and the personal, and include sonnets, haiku and gargantuan list-poems, amongst other forms.

    Featuring poems by:

    Iain Bamforth, Meg Bateman, John Burnside, Robert Crawford, Carol Ann Duffy, Douglas Dunn, Gerrie Fellows, Robin Fulton, Andrew Greig, George Campbell Hay, W.N. Herbert, Kathleen Jamie, Tom Leonard, Liz Lochhead, Norman MacCaig, Aonghas Macneacail, Kevin MacNeil, Edwin Morgan, Don Paterson, Richard Price, Sean Rafferty, Alastair Reid, Iain Crichton Smith, Alan Spence and Gael Turnbull.

    Robyn Marsack
    Robyn Marsack began her long association with Carcanet Press by editing the first edition of Edmund Blunden’s Selected Poems in 1982, and worked as a publishers’ editor until she became Director of the Scottish Poetry Library 2000–2016. She was a Royal Literary Fund Writing Fellow at the University of Glasgow 2016–2018. ... read more
    Ken Cockburn
    Ken Cockburn (1960–) is a poet and translator based in Edinburgh, where he worked for many years at the Scottish Poetry Library. He was the first writer-in-residence at the John Murray Archive, National Library of Scotland, and was awarded the Arts Foundation Fellowship for Literary Translation 2008. A selection of his ... read more
    Awards won by Ken Cockburn Short-listed, 2019 The Oxford-Weidenfeld Prize for Translation
    (Heroines from Abroad)
    Praise for Robyn Marsack 'Readers will be drawn to this book for the poets' letters, but what really dominates is the personality of Schmidt; at the end we are left with a prevailing sense of his editorial vision and an appreciation of his influence and accomplishment in the world of contemporary poetry publishing and criticism... Fifty Fifty is full of energy and play, and not a few crossed swords.'

    Kevin Gardner, Wild Court

     'A window into the award-winning world of Carcanet'
    Tristram Fane Saunders, The Telegraph
    'In celebration of the Manchester-based press' 50th anniversary, a fascinating collection of letters... tracing the eventful history of this small, ambitious and excellent press.'
    The Bookseller
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