Product Description Peter Scupham's eighth book of poems contains two central sequences: the first, written after the death of his mother, imagines various scenes from her life; the second is a more immediate recording of his father's conversations during the last few days of his life, as the poet nursed him. It is a brave and extraordinary book, in which Scupham's experience as a craftsman of words, and his haunted sense of time, come into their own. Review `this is a discreetly rewarding book; not least in the spiritual strength which upholds it, and the decent, unembarrassed offering and receiving of love..' Guardian`Animating Peter Scupham`s latest collection is the vigour of a dying generation. A poet always detained by the staying-power of the past, Scupham makes his commitment to memory on almost every page of Watching the Perseids...excellent selection` Times Literary Supplement`His English imagination has pastoral and mystical qualities, but he is above all a domestic archaeologist, not seeking his place in any world order but increasingly puzzling out his family and childhood roots... Scupham is a master of formal verse...yet the free-verse sequence, Dying, has the quality of a break-through...in which he steps out of metrical certainty and achieves the ad hoc rightness of natural speech.' Carol Rumens, Sunday Times`Watching the Perseids is a strong, healthy volume full of poems about death.' Anne Stevenson, Poetry Review About the Author Poet (The Air Show, 1988; Out Late, 1986)