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Rain

Don Paterson

You can read this poem at www.donpaterson.com


Don Paterson

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21st century poems Best Scottish Poems 2009 National Poetry Day 2013 scottish poems

About this poem

This poem was included in Best Scottish Poems 2009. Best Scottish Poems is an online publication, consisting of 20 poems chosen by a different editor each year, with comments by the editor and poets. It provides a personal overview of a year of Scottish poetry. The editor in 2009 was Andrew Greig.

Editor’s comment:
Don Paterson is so good that, by-passing envy or despair, I just go straight to pleasure and joy that anything can be so good, so right. How can he write serious and profound, demanding and scarifying poetry in rhyming couplets? How can he pull the rug out from under us and the poem yet again? Formal virtuosity apart, the poem is earned. There is nothing he confronts us with that he has not already accused himself of – cleverness and heartlessness included. The whole collection is magnificent.

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Best Scottish Poems 2009

edited by Andrew Greig
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Don Patersonb.1963

Since the appearance of his first collection in 1993, Don Paterson has emerged a major poet, as well as an important anthologist, editor and critic.
More about Don Paterson

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