Nine Fathom Deep

Like the work of the European poets who have nourished him, David Constantine's poetry is informed by a profoundly humane vision of the world. In his title-poem - which illuminates the themes of the whole book - the lovers are a utopian answering back against the curse (following a crime against Nature) that is carried by the ship passing above them. Throughout these poems, the personal life, with its own joys and suffering, asserts itself against a world whose characteristic forces are dis...