In the Becoming

Since the publication of his first collection, Rough Seas , in 1987, Tom Pow has been recognised as one of Scotland’s foremost contemporary poets; lyrical, celebratory and sensitive to the world around him. In The Becoming, New and Selected Poems draws on Pow’s work over the last two decades, from Rough Seas (1987) to his latest book, Dear Alice - Narratives of Madness (2008), including poems from Sparks! , his poetic correspondence with Diana Hendry, and Transfusion , his praise poem for Muhammad Ali and Nelson Mandela. The collection charts his ongoing poetical concerns: an exploration of landscape from the rainforest to the Arctic; an interest in how history and narrative shape our understanding of the present; and, in the new poems, a maturing engagement with those large themes that lie at the heart of Pow’s poetry, namely love and death. In The Becoming offers a timely reading of one of the finest poets of his generation.