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Testament
In his seventh full-length collection of poems, Robert Burns scholar 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 Robert Crawford 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 how poetry can communicate from generation to generation aspects of what makes us most vulnerably and engagingly human.
- GenresPoetry
80 pages, Paperback
First published July 3, 2014
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About the author
Robert Crawford
181 books17 followersRobert Crawford FRSE FBA (b. 1959) is a Scottish poet, scholar and critic. He is emeritus Professor of English at the University of St Andrews.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
July 30, 2025
"Wake up, new nation,/Stretch yourself. It's time/To fling the covers back, and sing..."
Weaving between the voluptuousness of love poems and the rigour of verse about politics and faith, TESTAMENT is filled with exquisite pieces: I particularly enjoyed the father-son dynamics that "The Marble Quarry" and "Shadow" reflect on so briefly but illuminatingly, the offbeat sensuality of "Nightingale Floor", and some of the vividly everyday language that Crawford retells stories from the Gospels in (in those poems, I hear echoes of Ezra Pound's "Ballad of the Goodly Fere"). However, with little familiarity with Scottish politics and even less with the Scots language, I was in a poor position to appreciate Crawford's satirical pieces about Scottish independence or his Scots poems.
However, I found that the concluding section of this collection, where Crawford retells the Gospels in plain language laced with local references—fishermen on the Sea of Galilee recast as being "by the lochside", the Roman soldiers who whip Jesus referred to as "squaddies"—rather underwhelming. The short lines of verse Crawford employ make these pieces more conversational, but sometimes creates an awkward nursery-rhyme rhythm, and offers little space for Crawford to explore the subtext of these scriptural passages, or the mutations they might go through when we locate them in a modern context.
Weaving between the voluptuousness of love poems and the rigour of verse about politics and faith, TESTAMENT is filled with exquisite pieces: I particularly enjoyed the father-son dynamics that "The Marble Quarry" and "Shadow" reflect on so briefly but illuminatingly, the offbeat sensuality of "Nightingale Floor", and some of the vividly everyday language that Crawford retells stories from the Gospels in (in those poems, I hear echoes of Ezra Pound's "Ballad of the Goodly Fere"). However, with little familiarity with Scottish politics and even less with the Scots language, I was in a poor position to appreciate Crawford's satirical pieces about Scottish independence or his Scots poems.
However, I found that the concluding section of this collection, where Crawford retells the Gospels in plain language laced with local references—fishermen on the Sea of Galilee recast as being "by the lochside", the Roman soldiers who whip Jesus referred to as "squaddies"—rather underwhelming. The short lines of verse Crawford employ make these pieces more conversational, but sometimes creates an awkward nursery-rhyme rhythm, and offers little space for Crawford to explore the subtext of these scriptural passages, or the mutations they might go through when we locate them in a modern context.
Displaying 1 of 1 review