Hearing Rilke quoted at the Co-op, an experience evoked in the title poem to Peter Robinson's latest collection, Buried Music, the poet continues his work of discovering poetry in everyday, anywhere places. It is as if, as Roy Fisher intuited, 'he carries a listening device, alert for the moments when the tectonic plates of mental experience slide quietly one beneath another to create paradoxes and complexities that call for poems to be made.' Prompted by varieties of losses - health, hopes, friends or relatives - his listening unearths a rhythmic contour from such opening cracks in the terrain. Buried Music finds poetry in its absence, presence in the place of what's missing. For those who have followed his trajectory, this new book offers a fresh opportunity to tune in to the work of what Poetry Review has called 'a major English poet', one according to The London Magazine, who is 'writing at the height of his powers' and producing, in the words of the selectors for the Poetry Book Society in 2012, 'his finest work to date.' For those new to his writing, this world is all before you.
In Buried Music, Peter Robinson continues his work of discovering poetry in everyday, anywhere places. It is as if, as Roy Fisher intuited, 'he carries a listening device, alert for the moments when the tectonic plates of mental experience slide quietly one beneath another to create paradoxes and complexities that call for poems to be made.'
