James Harpur interviews Peter Robinson for ‘The Fortnightly Review’ about his life in poetry. Read it here.
The Retrieved Attachments in Peter Robinson’s new collection are to people and places, friends and loved ones, mentor poets and artists. Deploying the full range of his gifts, these poems are characteristically responsive both to fresh encounters and evocative returns.
Presented in five titled sections they revisit the landscapes of his years in Japan, find a way to tell the story of a heartbreak, return to familial locations in an unvisitable Italy, elegize or re-encounter companions and friends, and, for the final section, recover intimate senses of a locality’s flora and fauna.
Peter Robinson has been described as ‘the finest poet of his generation’ (PN Review) and ‘a major English poet’ (Poetry Review). Retrieved Attachments again shows why.
From reviews of Collected Poems 1976–2016
‘a compendious book whose personality is constantly engaged and engaging; that warm, diffident voice … inviting the reader into a dialogue with a range of deep and searching empathies’ — The Manchester Review
‘… the authenticity of the experiences and relationships is unquestionable. Small veracities answer for large ones … which gives the book, read from start to finish, the sense I found in it of a gradually swelling joy’ — Poetry London
‘a testament to life not loss and to art’s haunting visibility’ — The London Magazine
Peter Robinson. Paperback, 210 x 135 mm, 140 pages, February 2023.