News at Eleven: The sardonic fatalism of much

of his [Mick Imlah's] poetry came from a very private region of his life, often hard to square with the record of his evident success in work, love, art and sport. But equally, the poems are never confessional, and though there were certainly periods of unhappiness and confusion in his life, the reader will search in vain for an unmediated account of them in his work. It was always his belief that poems "should somehow (whatever else they do) entertain or stimulate a reader, rather than exalting the writer".

from The Guardian: Mick Imlah: the lost talent

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