A unique collection of essays about modern British poets in their own words Four times each year, the Poetry Book Society selects the best poetry titles being published and asks the poet to write 500 words on their own work at the time of its publication. The PBS bulletin has published some of the most revealing, candid and insightful statements these poets have ever made. DON'T ASK ME WHAT I MEAN selects the best of these pieces. A genuine Who's Who of late 20th-century verse - Auden, Raine, Gunn, Hughes (who also contributes a remarkable short essay on Sylvia Plath's Ariel), Heaney, R.S. Thomas, Betjeman, Larkin, Merwin, Hecht, Paul Muldoon, Craig Raine, Norman McCaig, Geoffrey Hill, Tom Paulin, Derek Mahon, Sean O'Brien, up to and including contemporary notables such as Simon Armitage, Shapcott, Glyn Maxwell, Lavinia Greenlaw, Carol Ann Duffy, Wendy Cope, Michael Donaghy and Paul Farley.

Author Biography

Don Paterson's most recent poetry collection, Landing Light , won the 2001 Whitbread Poetry Award, and also received the 2003 T. S. Eliot Prize - making him the first poet to have won the award twice. He works as a musician and editor, teaches at the University of St Andrews, and lives in Kirriemuir, Scotland. Clare Brown was Director of the Poetry Book Society from 1996 to 2003. She is the author of The Creation Myths (2005) and Dream Laboratory (2007), both published by Bloomsbury.