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'Solitude' - Click to enlarge

 


Poetry

Ian Crockatt has published 6 collections of poetry, and has been a prize winner in national competitions.

ORIGINAL MYTHS, with etchings by Paul Fleming, was short listed for the Saltire Society’s Scottish Book of the Year Award in 2001. Ian has twice been awarded writer’s grants by the Scottish Arts Council.
His most recent publication, SKALD, is a 30 poem series based on a tightly wrought form developed by Viking court poets of the 9th – 13th centuries. Ian is currently working on a selection of translations from the work of Rainer Maria Rilke with a view to publication by ARC Publications in 2010.
For a flavour of his poetry click on each book’s image for an extract.

Current work
The Abduction
(after Rainer Maria Rilke)

Because she must feel...so often as a child
she absconded into the night, where exposed to
every element
she learned through her skin how different
a nursery's breathings are from the wild's.
Child, tonight it is the storm of your conscience
which shreds the air as you descend the silken rungs
into his arms; which carry you - as the wind's
insistence
bundles leaf-clouds through the park - further
and further till you are delivered

into the carriage; which, suddenly, is all.

O the reek of danger
in that black carriage, of passion and pursuit -
even its dank upholstery fills
you with ravenous feeling - as if a stranger
had buried her face in a stranger's greatcoat collar
and he were caressing her hair - her golden gift to
him -
and whispered in his throat to her,
blurted it meaninglessly as if his lips were numb,
I'm-with-you-here.


What the Critics have Said


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Flood Alert
(Chapman Publishing, 1996)


Original Myths
(Cruachan Publications, 2000)


The Crucifixion Bird
(Northwords Folio, 2002)


Blizzards of the Inner Eye
(Peterloo Poets, 2003)


The Lyrical Beast
(Salix Publications, 2004)


Skald
(Koo Press, 2009)
  
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