Don Paterson

'A classic of its kind.' William Boyd'Thought-provoking, hilarious, sardonic and scarily brilliant.' Scotsman'A work of dazzling craft.' Times Literary Supplement'A memoir in a million.' Sunday Times** Chosen as a Time Book of the Year ** Don Paterson was born in Dundee, Scotland, in 1963. He spent his boyhood on a council housing estate.When he wasn't busy dreading his birthdays, dodging kids who wanted to kill him in a game of toy fights,working with his country-and-western singer dad, obsessing over God, origami, sex or Scottish football cards, he was developing a sugar addiction, playing guitar and descending into madness.While he didn't manage to figure out who he was meant to be, the first twenty years of his life - before he took a chance, packed his guitar and boarded a train to London - did, for better or worse, shape who he would become'A book that swan-dives into the filthy waters of growing up and resurfaces clear-eyed, bearing pearls.' Financial Times 'Paterson is arguably Scotland's finest writer at work today, his sense of the absurd is acutely honed, his wisdom hard-won.' The National'Wonderful, aggressively wise and always - especially at its most serious - devastatingly funny.' Geoff Dyer

Exquisitely sharp, deeply humane and brutally hilarious, Toy Fights is a future classic from one of the greatest writers of his generation.'Devastatingly funny.' Geoff Dyer'Thought-provoking, hilarious, sardonic and scarily brilliant' Scotsman'Laugh-out-loud funny' Herald on SundayThis is a book about family, money and music but also about schizophrenia, hell, narcissists, debt and the working class, anger, swearing, drugs, books, football, love, origami, the peculiar insanity of Dundee, sugar, religious mania, the sexual excesses of the Scottish club band scene and, more generally, the lengths we go to not to be bored.Don Paterson was born in Dundee, Scotland, in 1963. He spent his boyhood on a council housing estate. When he wasn't busy dreading his birthdays, dodging kids who wanted to kill him in a game of Toy Fights, working with his country-and-western singer dad, screwing up in the Boys' Brigade, obsessing over God, origami, The Osmonds, stamps, sex or Scottish football cards, he was developing a sugar addiction, failing his exams, playing guitar, falling in love, dodging employment and descending into madness. While he didn't manage to figure out who he was meant to be, the first twenty years of his life - before he took a chance, packed his guitar and boarded a train to London - did, for better or worse, shape who he would become.

This collection, which won the 2015 Costa Poetry Award, is an exhibition of the Dundee-born poet's stunningly accomplished adoption of the sonnet's ancient structure This collection from Don Paterson, his first since the Forward Prize-winning Rain in 2009, is a series of forty luminous sonnets. Some take a traditional form, while others experiment with the reader's conception of the sonnet, but they all share the lyrical intelligence and musical gift that has made Paterson one of our most celebrated poets. Addressed to friends and enemies, the living and the dead, children, musicians, poets, and dogs, these poems are as ambitious in their scope and tonal range as in the breadth of their concerns. Here, voices call home from the blackout and the airlock, the storm cave and the s ance, the coal shed, the war, the highway, the forest, and the sea. These are voices frustrated by distance and darkness, which ring with the "sound that fades up from the hiss, / like a glass some random downdraught had set ringing, / now full of its only note, its lonely call." In 40 Sonnets, Paterson returns to some of his central themes--contradiction and strangeness, tension and transformation, the dream world, and the divided self--in some of the most powerful and formally assured poems of his career.

'Smith': a reader's guide to the poetry of Michael Donaghy is the first substantial critical work to be written on one of the UK's best-loved poets. Donaghy, a hugely popular, influential and much-loved figure in the UK poetry scene, died tragically early at the age of fifty in 2004. In fifty short essays accompanying fifty of Donaghy's best poems, his friend and editor Don Paterson makes the argument for Donaghy to be recognised as one of the greatest poets of recent years, and author of some of the most powerful, complex, moving and memorable poems to have been written in our lifetime. Unusually for a work of criticism, his commentary combines sharp and witty analysis of Donaghy's poems with biographical sketch and personal reminiscence, setting Donaghy's work in both a literary and a human context. This book coincides with the tenth anniversary of Donaghy's death, and the publication of the new paperback edition of his Collected Poems.

Shakespeare's Sonnets are as important and vital today as they were when first published four hundred years ago. Perhaps no collection of verse before or since has so captured the imagination of readers and lovers; certainly no poem has come under such intense critical scrutiny, and presented the reader with such a bewildering number of alternative interpretations. In this illuminating and often irreverent guide, Don Paterson offers a fresh and direct approach to the Sonnets, asking what they can still mean to the twenty-first century reader.In a series of fascinating and highly entertaining commentaries placed alongside the poems themselves, Don Paterson discusses the meaning, technique, hidden structure and feverish narrative of the Sonnets, as well as the difficulties they present for the modern reader. Most importantly, however, he looks at what they tell us about William Shakespeare the lover - and what they might still tell us about ourselves.

Poets have been fascinated and challenged by the sonnet ever since it was imported from Italy to England in the sixteenth century. With its fourteen lines, inexhaustibly variable, it has met particular needs of almost every major poet from Thomas Wyatt to Paul Muldoon. Don Paterson, himself an adept of the form, has devised an anthology that is both a sharing of personal favourites and a celebration of high moments in the sonnet's history. His introduction and wonderfully insightful notes provide a history and commentary that will prove illuminating to the casual reader and indispensable to the student or aspiring sonneteer.

In our deepest grief we still turn instinctively to poetry for solace. These poems, drawn from many different ages and cultures, remind us that the experience of parting is a timelessly human one: however alone the loss of a loved one leaves us, our mourning is also something that deeply unites us; these poems of parting and passing, of sorrow and healing, will find a deep echo within those who find themselves dealing with grief or bereavement. Whatever our loss, it is assuaged in finding a voice – and whether that voice is one of private remembrance or public memorial, The Picador Book of Funeral Poems will help you towards it.

In this, his first volume of original verse since the award-winning Landing Light, Don Paterson is found writing at his most memorable and direct. In an assembly of masterful lyrics and monologues, he conjures a series of fables and charms that serve both to expose us to the unsettling forces within the world and simultaneously offer some protection against them. Whether outwardly elemental in their address, or more personal in their direction, these poems - to the rain and the sea, to his young sons or beloved friends - never shy from their inquiry into truth and lie, embracing everything in scope from the rangy narrative to the tiny renku. Rain, which includes the winner of this year's Forward Prize for the Best Individual Poem and an extended elegy for the poet Michael Donaghy, is Don Paterson's most intimate and manifest collection to date.

In this, his first volume of original verse since the award-winning "Landing Light," Don Paterson is found writing at his most memorable and direct. In an assembly of masterful lyrics and monologues, he conjures a series of fables and charms that serve both to expose us to the unsettling forces within the world and to offer some protection against them. Whether outwardly elemental in their address or more personal in their direction, these poems addressed to the rain and the sea, to his young sons or beloved friends never shy from their inquiry into truth and lie, embracing everything in scope from the rangy narrative to the tiny renku. "Rain," which includes the winner of this year's Forward Prize for the Best Individual Poem and an extended elegy for the poet Michael Donaghy, is Paterson's most intimate and manifest collection to date."

WINNER OF THE WHITBREAD PRIZE FOR POETRY 2003Landing Light is Don Paterson's most accomplished and spiritual collection to date. In these poems, he guides us down the labyrinths of our deepest and most private concerns, pursuing the intimacy that the spoken - as well as the printed - word brings. Ceaselessly inquiring, deftly tuned into the emotional crackle of the world, Paterson explores the swings of light and dark that mark our most troubling feelings: utterance and silence, disclosure and concealment, and ultimately the need to both renew and to face finality.'I couldn't get Don Paterson's brilliant Landing Light out of my head.' Spectator'The most animated and animating volume of new poems I have read for years.' Times Literary Supplement

This new collection from Don Paterson, his first since the Forward prize-winning Rain in 2009, is a series of forty sonnets. Some take a more traditional form, some are highly experimental, but what these poems share is a lyrical intelligence and musical gift that has been visible in his work since his first book of poems, Nil Nil, in 2009. Addressed to children, friends and enemies, the living and the dead, musicians, poets and dogs, these poems display an ambition in their scope and tonal range matched by the breadth of their concerns. Here, voices call home from the blackout and the airlock, the storm cave and the séance, the coalshed, the war, the ringroad, the forest and the sea. These are voices frustrated by distance, by shot glass and bar rail, by the dark, leaving the 'sound that fades up from the hiss, / like a glass some random downdraught had set ringing, / now full of its only note, its lonely call . . .'In 40 Sonnets Paterson returns to some of his central themes - contradiction and strangeness, tension and transformation, the dream world, and the divided self - in some of the most powerful and formally assured poems he has written to date. This is a rich and accomplished new work from one of the foremost poets writing in English today.

Since his debut, Nil Nil, won the Forward Prize for Best First Collection in 1993, Don Paterson has lit up the poetry scene in the U.K. His dazzling, intensely lyric and luminous verse has delighted readers ever since, and won many awards along the way. God's Gift Women took the T. S. Eliot Prize in 1997, Landing Light won it again in 2003 and the Whitbread Award besides, and Rain (2009), his most recent collection, won the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry. This selection, drawn from twenty years of work, is made by the author himself and includes not only those poems from his four single volumes, but his thrilling and original adaptations of the poems of Antonio Machado and Rainer Maria Rilke. For any readers unfamiliar with Don Paterson's work, this Selected Poems offers the perfect introduction to this most captivating of writers; and for fans, an essential gathering from a master craftsman.

Don’t Ask Me What I Mean is a comprehensive guide to the last fifty years of British poetry –written by the poets themselves. In this collection of short essays, published in celebration of the golden anniversary of the Poetry Book Society, the reader will find Philip Larkin writing on The Whitsun Weddings, Louis MacNeice on The Burning Perch, Paul Muldoon on the etymology of ‘quoof’, Carol Ann Duffy on difficulties with gonks and Simon Armitage on the Dead Sea scrolls – as well as rare contributions from Ted Hughes, Seamus Heaney, Kingsley Amis, R. S. Thomas, Andrew Motion, U. A. Fanthorpe, Jo Shapcott, Geoffrey Hill, Michael Donaghy, Elizabeth Jennings and many, many others. Together these statements give an intellectually dazzling, candid and deeply personal account of a turbulent and fascinating period in -our recent literary history. They will also afford the reader a unique insight into some of the most remarkable minds of our time.

Rainer Maria Rilke's 55 Sonnets to Orpheus remain a testimony to a writer whose significance other poets continue to testify to. Don Paterson's translation offers a radiant and at times distressing version of the great work.

Aphorism (n.): a pithy observation which contains a general truth 'All my teachers have been women. Though several men have taken me aside for an hour to tell me things they know' The Book of Shadows contains several hundred reflections and aphorisms on love, God, art, sex, death, work, and the spirit, imagination and conduct of the human animal. Writing with the same mixture of high seriousness, dark humour and lyric precision that define his poetry, Don Paterson has made a book to carry everywhere and open anywhere - to brighten or darken the moment, but always to administer a jolt to the idling mind. 'Falling and flying are near-identical sensations, in all but one final detail. We should remember this when we see those men and women seemingly in love with their own decline'

Nil Nil, Don Paterson's first volume of poetry, won the Forward Prize for Best First Collection in 1993 and heralded the arrival of a major new talent. The book presented a new and urgent poetry of dream-life, mystery and music, sexual obsession and the consolations of drink - all delivered with great formal skill and imaginative daring.'One of the finest first books of poems I've read for ages.' Paul Muldoon'If you are wondering whether great poems are still being written, you ought to read Don Paterson's.' Charles Simic'One of the most ferociously talented of all British poets.' Catherine Lockerbie

A second collection of poetry from the author of the 1994 winner of the Forward Prize for Nil Nil. One of the new poems in this book, A Private Bottling, won the Observer Arvon National Poetry Competition.

Don Paterson is one of our most acclaimed contemporary poets, possessed of "an infinite sensitivity to the world" (Zadie Smith). But his current standing gives few hints of his hilariously misspent youth. An indifferent student prone to obsessions (with girls at school and . . . origami), Paterson nevertheless made clear early on his immense gift for observation. In Toy Fights, he vividly re-creates the customs of the Scottish working class, from the titular childhood game ("basically twenty minutes of extreme violence without pretext") to the virtues of the sugary sweet known as tablet. When American pop culture arrived, Paterson fell hard for the so-called outlaw sound; by his teens, he was traveling with his father, a Stetson-wearing "country" musician, and becoming guitar-mad himself. A memoir of family, music, and highly inventive profanity, Toy Fights is an unforgettable account of the years we all spend in rehearsal for real life.

'The Arctic' in Don Paterson's powerful new collection is the name of a bar frequented by the survivors of several kinds of apocalypse. The poems gathered here are as various as the clientele: elegies for the poet's musician father; tales of the love lives of gods and the childhoods of psychopaths; troubled encounters between men and women; odes to movies and the male anatomy; studies of art and ambition, politics and parenthood. Other voices enter the fray in renderings of Cavafy, Montale and the Chilean poet Gabriela Mistral. And in the fourth part of Paterson's ongoing poem 'The Alexandrian Library', the poet-as-amateur scientist - from a weather station at the top of Ben Nevis to the cellar of The Arctic - bears witness to the imminence of man-made extinction. By turns urgent, railing and tender, these are poems of and for our times, by one of our most celebrated and formally adventurous writers.

Don Paterson is one of our most acclaimed contemporary poets, possessed of "an infinite sensitivity to the world" (Zadie Smith). But his current standing gives few hints of his hilariously misspent youth. An indifferent student prone to obsessions (with girls at school and . . . origami), Paterson nevertheless made clear early on his immense gift for observation. In Toy Fights, he vividly re-creates the customs of the Scottish working class, from the titular childhood game ("basically twenty minutes of extreme violence without pretext") to the virtues of the sugary sweet known as tablet. When American pop culture arrived, Paterson fell hard for the so-called outlaw sound; by his teens, he was traveling with his father, a Stetson-wearing "country" musician, and becoming guitar-mad himself. A memoir of family, music, and highly inventive profanity, Toy Fights is an unforgettable account of the years we all spend in rehearsal for real life.