News at Eleven: You don't ever finish a [Christopher] Reid

poem feeling that it could have been done a little bit better. In the cadences of some of the early poems there's a hint, or more, of Larkin, in the careful and well-mannered grotesqueries of, say, the farm "where pigs on tip-toes/piss with such a haunted look", but Reid is thankfully free of his predecessor's studied weariness, and approaches his subjects with a more gracious and forgiving shake of the head.

There are poems here, too, from a further three collections, including a somewhat modest selection from Reid's moving series of poems about the death of his wife, A Scattering, which won the 2009 Costa Book of the Year award.

from The Guardian: Selected Poems by Christopher Reid--review

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