A Painted Field – Robin Robertson’s first collection – was published in 1997 to unanimous acclaim. In language both sensuous and coolly forthright, the poems in Slow Air describe the arc of loss, the search for grace, and the radiances and shadows of the natural world – the work pitching its embattled romanticism, its lyric weight, against fear, grief and erasure.

Praise for A Painted Field

‘A superb debut . . . darkly chiselled poems haunted by mortality and the fragility of life’s pleasures’ Kazuo Ishiguro, Sunday Times Books of the Year

‘The best new poet in Britain is Robin Robertson’ Andrew O’Hagan, Independent on Sunday Books of the Year

‘A poetic voice of quiet yet charged maturity: lyrical and complex, transparent and gravid, it can treat both the public theme and the intensely personal with the same serenely wrought fire’ William Boyd, Scotsman Books of the Year

‘Robin Robertson is a master of the poetic line; this is wonderful work, at once muscular and delicate, ringing with a plangent, bitter music. A marvellous debut’ John Banville

Robin Robertson is from the north-east coast of Scotland. He has published six previous books of poetry and received various accolades, including the Petrarca-Preis, the E.M. Forster Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and all three Forward Prizes. His last book, The Long Take – a narrative poem set in post-war America – won the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction, the Goldsmiths Prize for innovative fiction, and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize., Robin Robertson is from the north-east coast of Scotland. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, he has published six books of poetry and received a number of accolades, including the Petrarca-Preis, the E.M. Forster Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and all three Forward Prizes. His selected poems, Sailing the Forest, came out in 2014. The Long Take won the Roehampton Poetry Prize, the Goldsmiths Prize for Fiction and the Walter Scott Prize, and was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize.