Michael Symmons Roberts

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Dog Star

Ransom

Deaths of the Poets

Mancunia

Selected Poems

Drysalter

Edgelands

Burning Babylon

Corpus

Raising Sparks

Soft Keys

Breath

The Half Healed

Patrick's Alphabet

Quartet for the End of Time

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In this remarkable book, Symmons Roberts explores his complex ongoing relationship with Messiaen's visionary work , alongside reflections on grief, faith and the creative process… Symmons Roberts writes with wit, beauty and piercing insight... In responding to Messiaen's radiant masterpiece, Symmons Roberts has created a masterpiece of his own

This wonderful book should help to win the strange, bird-fixated composer new admirers.

Symmons Roberts’ prose…is silky and emotive, with his success in weaving the personal strands with the musical partly owed to the deep connections wrought by his poems, each one seemingly chosen to heighten our understanding of what precedes it

Every sentence is beautifully assembled and polished... A properly engrossing exploration of music, place, religion and what it is to be human

Sarah Tarlow, author of THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF LOSS

I love Michael Symmons Roberts' poetry. He is a religious poet in a secular age. His work is about connection between the things of the spirit and the things of the world. And his work is about transcendence

He displays an amazing talent for intimacy on paper – sometimes, it almost takes your breath away

On Music, Grief and Birdsong

Michael Symmons Roberts was born in Preston, Lancashire in 1963. His books of poetry have won many awards including the Forward Prize and the Costa Poetry Award for Drysalter (2013) and the Whitbread Poetry Prize for Corpus (2004). His Selected Poems was published by Cape in 2016. As a librettist, his work with composers has been performed in concert halls and opera houses around the world. The Sacrifice (for Welsh National Opera) with composer James MacMillan, won an RPS Award for Opera, and choral works Elliptics (for BBC Philharmonic) and The Anvil (for Manchester International Festival) with composer Emily Howard, were both nominated for Ivor Novello Awards. His non-fiction book Edgelands (with Paul Farley, 2011) won the Foyles Book of Ideas Award and the Jerwood Prize. He is an award-winning broadcaster and dramatist, Professor of Poetry at Manchester Metropolitan University and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

Quartet for the End of Time

On Music, Grief and Birdsong

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This wonderful book should help to win the strange, bird-fixated composer new admirers.

Symmons Roberts’ prose…is silky and emotive, with his success in weaving the personal strands with the musical partly owed to the deep connections wrought by his poems, each one seemingly chosen to heighten our understanding of what precedes it

Every sentence is beautifully assembled and polished... A properly engrossing exploration of music, place, religion and what it is to be human

I love Michael Symmons Roberts' poetry. He is a religious poet in a secular age. His work is about connection between the things of the spirit and the things of the world. And his work is about transcendence

He displays an amazing talent for intimacy on paper – sometimes, it almost takes your breath away

An outstanding writer

About Michael Symmons Roberts

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