The Arctic
By Don Paterson
2022
First Published
3.88
Average Rating
104
Number of Pages
In this new collection from Don Paterson, 'The Arctic' is the bar frequented in the backstreet of a post-apocalyptic world. Under its echoey aegis are gathered poems about men and women, polemical responses to a pandemic, microdot poems, odes to dogs, to movies and the male anatomy, and, in the chill undertow, a series of poems that mourn the poet's musician father. Other poets are drawn in from the cold, including the Cuban, Gabriela Mistral, whose verses are magically transformed to Paterson's native Scots; there are versions, too, of Cavafy, Montale and Unamuno. And in the fourth part Paterson's ongoing long poem 'The Alexandrian Library', travelling from a weather station at the top of Ben Nevis to the cellar back at The Arctic Bar, we are witness to the imminence of man-made extinction. By turn, urgent, railing, tender, these are poems for our times, by one of our most celebrated and formally adventurous poets.
Avg Rating
3.88
Number of Ratings
67
5 STARS
28%
4 STARS
37%
3 STARS
28%
2 STARS
6%
1 STARS
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Author
Don Paterson
Author · 23 books
Don Paterson was born in 1963 in Dundee, Scotland. He is Professor of Poetry at the University of St Andrews, and since 1996 has been poetry editor at Picador MacMillan. He is the author of seven books of poetry, and also works as a guitarist and composer.
