Born in the small community of Whithorn in Galloway, Scotland, Alastair Reid (1926-2014) became one of the most international figures in post-war Scottish literature. A staff writer on The New Yorker for many years, he was widely admired as an essayist and as a translator of Latin American writers, including Neruda and Borges. He also spent time in Mallorca working with Robert Graves in the 1950's. This is the first ever collected poems of a man Jay Parini described as "among the finest poets of his generation, it's time his work found the audience it deserves".

Born in the small community of Whithorn in Galloway, Alastair Reid (1926-2014) became one of the most international figures in post-war Scottish literature. A staff writer on The New Yorker for many years, he was widely admired as an essayist and as a translator of Latin American writers, including Neruda and Borges. He also spent time in Mallorca working with Robert Graves in the 1950's.