Douglas Dunn is one of the most widely-read and respected poets of his generation. In a career spanning over 30 years, he has refined lyric and elegiac poetry into an instrument with which to make acute observations of English urban scenes, pastoral traditions, class and education, and the past, present and future of his native Scotland. In this lucid and wide-ranging critical study, poet and critic David Kennedy charts Dunn’s career from his debut volume Terry Street (1969) to his New Selected Poems 1964-2000 (2003). He argues that Dunn’s poetry has developed through often highly ambivalent relationships with form, culture and the public identity and role of the poet. Subtle readings of Dunn’s most intimate poetry are combined with careful analysis of Dunn’s exploration of what form Scotland’s national consciousness might take. Dunn emerges as a complex writer passionately concerned with both the private and the political.
