The lamentation of the dead has been a preoccupation in Peter Levi’s recent poetry, as well as the subject of his inaugural lecture as Oxford Professor of Poetry in 1984. Few poets of our time have found ways in which to compose such sustained meditations on matters of life and death as Peter Levi has done in these personal yet formal poems. Shakespeare’s Birthday collects three laments – in memory of Charles Haldeman, Caryl Brahms and Alasdair Clayre – written since those included in The Echoing Green (1983), to which this forms a companion volume.