Rainer Maria Rilke was one of the twentieth century’s great lyric poets. Born in Prague in 1875, he was educated in Germany and later in his life moved to Switzerland, where he wrote his two last works, the Duino Elegies and Sonnets to Orpheus, both published in 1923. The fifty-nine Sonnets to Orpheus were completed in less than a month, and famously described by the poet as ‘perhaps the most mysterious - in the way they arrived and entrusted themselves to me - the most enigmatic dictation I have ever received’.

For poets, Orpheus represents the ultimate journey into life and death - the mythical poet who could enchant any living thing - even the beasts and the trees. In this, his fifth collection of poems, Don Paterson, himself a master of the sonnet form, offers a radiant and at times distressing version of the great work. His translation is an act of intense and sustained attention, which has in turn yielded new poems of striking authority, independence and lyric grace.