The True Height of the Ear

Iain Galbraith has that rare twofold gift — a keen ear for the music in language and an eye for the specifics that we so often miss, as we go about our distracted business. Here is poetry that returns us to the given world with a sense, both of wonder, and of the keenest appreciation, slowed enough, for a time, to give every last detail its due.

In The True Height of the Ear acclaimed translator Iain Galbraith brings his remarkable ear for the music of words to its true height: the writing of his own intricate, sensual and self-aware poetry. Galbraith works language and form like a jeweller, his sheer revelling joy in the creation of poems is held in balance by the elegaic and philosophical tone of this collection.

Whether he is speaking of artifacts, landscapes, or characters, Iain Galbraith offers poems driven by intense regard, both in the operation of the poet's eye and of his language. Galbraith's aim is not something as ordinary as understanding; it's to make us see and sense, to make us feel the rightness and accuracy, and the haunting mystery, of experience and of memory. Then again, that's what the best poets always do.