To swither means to suffer indecision or doubt, but there is no faltering in these poems. There is no uncertainty in line or sound or image, only in the themes of flux and change and transformation that thread through this powerful third collection.

Robin Robertson has written a book of remarkable cohesion and range that calls on his knowledge of folklore and myth to fuse the old with the new. From raw, exposed poems about the end of childhood to erotically charged lyrics about the ends of desire, from a brilliant retelling of the metamorphosis and death of Actaeon to the final freeing of the waters in Holding Proteus, these poems are bright epiphanies of passion and loss.

Robin Robertson is from the northeast coast of Scotland and now lives in London. His first collection of poems, A Painted Field, won numerous awards, including the Forward Poetry Prize for Best First Collection and the Scottish First Book of the Year Award. His second collection, Slow Air, appeared in 2002, his third, Swithering, won the Forward Poetry Prize for Best Collection and was a finalist for the T. S. Eliot Prize for Poetry, and his fourth, The Wrecking Light, was shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize for Poetry, the Costa Poetry Award, and the Forward Poetry Prize. His work appears regularly in the London Review of Books, the New York Review of Books, and The Times Literary Supplement. In 2004 he received the E. M. Forster Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He lives in London.

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