Testament

To make a testament is to attempt to pass on what matters most.

In his seventh full-length collection of poems Robert Crawford writes of love, loss, belief, and commitment.

Whether in intimate erotic lyrics or in a sustained engagement with the politics of Scottish independence he writes with passion, wit, and assurance about struggles to pass on values and treasures.

The book opens with a sequence of love poems, and closes with ‘Testament’, a startlingly fresh gathering of deftly rhymed paraphrases based on the New Testament.

Whether making versions of Cavafy or elegising fellow poet Mick Imlah, or writing how a father hands on a piece of marble to his son, Robert Crawford shows in Testament how poetry can communicate from generation to generation aspects of what makes us most vulnerably and engagingly human.