In Darkest Capital

In Darkest Capital gathers all of Drew Milne's poems up to 2017, including two major uncollected sequences, 'Blueprints & Ziggurats' and 'Lichens for Marxists'. A Scottish poet working out of the modernist avant-garde, through pop and art rock, Milne moves between Beckett and Brecht, through punk and beyond. Along the way there are homages to Mina Loy, Gertrude Stein, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Frank O'Hara, Kurt Schwitters, Ian Hamilton Finlay, John Cage and Tom Raworth. His poems do not break down into form and content but insist on a continuity between lyrical purpose and critical thinking. An ark of ecological resistances to late capitalism, Milne's Collected Poems captures the 'skewed luxuriance' (Guardian) of his eco-socialist poetics.

Drew Milne was born in Edinburgh in 1964 and grew up in Scotland. He lives and works in Cambridge with his wife, Redell Olsen, and two children. In 1995 he was Writer in Residence at the Tate Gallery, London. His books of poetry include Sheet Mettle (1994), Bench Marks (1998), The Damage (2001), Mars Disarmed (2001), and Go Figure (2003), and, with John Kinsella, Reactor Red Shoes (2013). He edited Marxist Literary Theory (1996), with Terry Eagleton, and Modern Critical Thought (2003). Since 1997 he's been the Judith E. Wilson Lecturer in Drama & Poetry at the University of Cambridge.