Carcanet Press - Drew Milne

About
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Drew Milne was born in Edinburgh in 1964 and grew up in Scotland. He lives and works in Cambridge with his wife, Redell Olsen, and two children. In 1995 he was Writer in Residence at the Tate Gallery, London. His books of poetry include Sheet Mettle (1994), Bench Marks (1998), The Damage (2001), Mars Disarmed (2001), and Go Figure (2003), and, with John Kinsella, Reactor Red Shoes (2013). He edited Marxist Literary Theory (1996), with Terry Eagleton, and Modern Critical Thought (2003). Since 1997 he’s been the Judith E. Wilson Lecturer in Drama & Poetry at the University of Cambridge.

Praise for Drew Milne '...here is where Milne's constructivist nature requires culture to complete itself, even as historical thought moves towards manifesto. As with the demands of lyric to be expressive song, all this woven space-time is highly compressed [...] Coming at mid-career, this volume of collected poems already demonstrates a furtherance of collectivities in utilizing the particular word for creative instrumentalities that develop critical thought, proof that the lyric poem can implement intelligent social policy.'

Marjorie Welish, Chicago Review

'Milne's poetic universe is suffused with a sharp awareness of the objects of mass consumption... A hectic and broken world leaves its bloody marks on his poems, where history is a butcher putting his finger on the scales.'
David Lau, Lana Turner Journal

'Milne thrives on both formalism and Marxism, but both are subservient to a wit and musicality that makes these dense, complex poems both readable and challenging.I love the fluidity of the language: this is poetry to read aloud, listening to the syntactical slipperiness, the echo and sustain of its music. This, for me has always been Milne's major strength.'
Stride Magazine

'This is a stirring, generous, probing collection, sure-minded, steady under fire (including from its own satirical reflection), devastatingly clear about the devastations all will face, which so many suffer now, here in this world: ethical poetry of the highest order, looking you direct in the eye, from the several vantage-points of its many levels of engagement with the predicament, advocate-activist, searchingly political, witty and intellectual, metaphysical, Scottish, European, Marxist-ecological - a collection to savour (and then read again) as we move through into the bad times.'
Adam Piette, Blackbox Manifold

'This is a book to live in and grow in, and through. One for the big list, until the end of our time.'
Manchester Review of Books

'Drew Milne is first and foremost a formalist par excellence. He is a syllable counter, a shape shifter, and above all he is a sonic machine. His native inclination as a formalist is at once modernist and Marxist. But one could also say, simply, that Milne is a late Romantic lyric-poet with a political imagination. His latest turn to lichen introduces into the work a sense of scale to the vulnerable and tenuous relationship we have to the natural world and gives a plaintive urgency to his song.'
Peter Gizzi
'Lyrical social critique becomes a plausible art . . . Milne's rhetoric displays a subtle, internalized argument that draws one to its cause.'
Marjorie Welish on Go Figure
'Beckoning disjunctions and witty deformations shine their torch on tawdry contemporary realia, but lyrical moments and Scottish echoes fill the interstices with pleasing difference.'
Edwin Morgan on Sheet Mettle

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Drew Milne Books by this author: In Darkest Capital About Reviews Drew Milne was born in Edinburgh in 1964 and grew up in Scotland. He lives and works in Cambridge with his wife, Redell Olsen, and two children. In 1995 he was Writer in Residence at the Tate Gallery, London. His books of poetry include Sheet Mettle (1994), Bench Marks (1998), The Damage (2001), Mars Disarmed (2001), and Go Figure (2003), and, with John Kinsella, Reactor Red Shoes (2013). He edited Marxist Literary Theory (1996), with Terry Eagleton, and Modern Critical Thought (2003). Since 1997 he’s been the Judith E. Wilson Lecturer in Drama & Poetry at the University of Cambridge. Praise for Drew Milne '...here is where Milne's constructivist nature requires culture to complete itself, even as historical thought moves towards manifesto. As with the demands of lyric to be expressive song, all this woven space-time is highly compressed [...] Coming at mid-career, this volume of collected poems already demonstrates a furtherance of collectivities in utilizing the particular word for creative instrumentalities that develop critical thought, proof that the lyric poem can implement intelligent social policy.' Marjorie Welish, Chicago Review 'Milne's poetic universe is suffused with a sharp awareness of the objects of mass consumption... A hectic and broken world leaves its bloody marks on his poems, where history is a butcher putting his finger on the scales.' David Lau, Lana Turner Journal 'Milne thrives on both formalism and Marxism, but both are subservient to a wit and musicality that makes these dense, complex poems both readable and challenging.I love the fluidity of the language: this is poetry to read aloud, listening to the syntactical slipperiness, the echo and sustain of its music. This, for me has always been Milne's major strength.' Stride Magazine 'This is a stirring, generous, probing collection, sure-minded, steady under fire (including from its own satirical reflection), devastatingly clear about the devastations all will face, which so many suffer now, here in this world: ethical poetry of the highest order, looking you direct in the eye, from the several vantage-points of its many levels of engagement with the predicament, advocate-activist, searchingly political, witty and intellectual, metaphysical, Scottish, European, Marxist-ecological - a collection to savour (and then read again) as we move through into the bad times.' Adam Piette, Blackbox Manifold 'This is a book to live in and grow in, and through. One for the big list, until the end of our time.' Manchester Review of Books 'Drew Milne is first and foremost a formalist par excellence. He is a syllable counter, a shape shifter, and above all he is a sonic machine. His native inclination as a formalist is at once modernist and Marxist. But one could also say, simply, that Milne is a late Romantic lyric-poet with a political imagination. His latest turn to lichen introduces into the work a sense of scale to the vulnerable and tenuous relationship we have to the natural world and gives a plaintive urgency to his song.' Peter Gizzi 'Lyrical social critique becomes a plausible art . . . Milne's rhetoric displays a subtle, internalized argument that draws one to its cause.' Marjorie Welish on Go Figure 'Beckoning disjunctions and witty deformations shine their torch on tawdry contemporary realia, but lyrical moments and Scottish echoes fill the interstices with pleasing difference.' Edwin Morgan on Sheet Mettle	Share this... Quick Links Carcanet Poetry Carcanet Classics Carcanet Fiction Carcanet Film Lives and Letters PN Review Video Carcanet Celebrates 50 Years! The Carcanet Blog One Little Room: Peter McDonald read more Collected Poems: Mimi Khalvati read more Invisible Dog: Fabio Morbito, translated by Richard Gwyn read more Dante's Purgatorio: Philip Terry read more Billy 'Nibs' Buckshot: John Gallas read more Emotional Support Horse: Claudine Toutoungi read more
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