"Long ago I spent some years in the East, and I recall that in a certain establishment in a back street in Singapore a motto used to hang over the bar: ‘As a martini demands gin, so British verse requires Tom Raworth.’" John Tranter • Jacket "Raworth is very much in favour of jam (as reward, as improv) today: if there is one element that is at stake in all his work, it is that of speed. His is a quicksilver mind, one that announces very early, ‘i made this pact, intelligence/shall not replace intuition’ (‘Wedding Day’), and that revels in brushing aside any tendency to ponder." Jonathan Catherall • The Literateur "In the later poems, the most daily of routines are seen to have a political unconscious. The occasion for ‘Lippitude’ (the noun literally means soreness of the eyes, but it also implies having a lot of lip), is probably the familiar eye-chart test." Marjorie Perloff • PN Review

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