Since Edwin Muir’s death in 1959 at the age of 71, his poetry has slipped into the shadows, and he has become a somewhat neglected figure. Although he did much through his translations to promote the work of Franz Kafka, Muir is not obviously a modernist. His poetry tends to rely on traditional metres and rhymes and has a Latinate grammar. And yet it was Muir who wrote one of the greatest eco-poems of the 20th century. In fact, by virtue of his remote background and the retentive power of his memory, he was a born eco-poet.
Muir was born and brought up in the Orkney Islands before his family ...
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