Testament | Fiction - www.zzdbook.com

Testament

Dec 1, 2025 8:38 AM

Author:Robert Crawford

Testament

To make a testament is to attempt to pass on what matters most. In his seventh full-length collection of poems Robert Crawford writes of love, loss, belief, and commitment. Whether in intimate erotic lyrics or in a sustained engagement with the politics of Scottish independence he writes with passion, wit, and assurance about struggles to pass on values and treasures. The book opens with a sequence of love poems, and closes with ‘Testament’, a startlingly fresh gathering of deftly rhymed paraphrases based on the New Testament. Whether making versions of Cavafy or elegising fellow poet Mick Imlah, or writing how a father hands on a piece of marble to his son, Robert Crawford shows in Testament how poetry can communicate from generation to generation aspects of what makes us most vulnerably and engagingly human.

Reviews

Crawford’s poetic voice has a calm lucidity, never ostentatious or wilfully obscure… Poets are better with metaphors than politicians.

—— Sarah Mansfield , Scotland on Sunday

Exquisite . . . There are times in this book where I paused to admire the subtle craft of what Carroll is doing. Every piece of this book is sanded and planed and perfectly joined

—— The Age

A must read

—— Australian Publisher & Bookseller

An elegantly simple yet carefully crafted and stylishly narrated story

—— Good Reading

It is a sort of a private novel. In the heroine, Anne Elliot, we have glimpses of Austen and what happened to her; the lost romance and the lost youth

—— Julian Fellowes , Sunday Express

Who needs eReaders when book publishers are repackaging classic tales in beautiful covers like these? … Perfect for fans of the author

—— Bella

Beautifully designed… Perfect collectable gift for Austen fans and design devotees

—— So Darling

These might be the loveliest editions of Jane Austen’s novels we’ve seen in a long time

—— A Little Bird (blog)

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