David Scott belongs firmly to the long tradition of parson-poets that goes back at least as far as George Herbert… For all their reticence, there is a compassion in these poems and a sense of propriety’ – Norman Nicholson. Springing from ordinary events, or a picture, or an aspect of the priestly life, David Scott’s beautifully restrained poems work up the detail into a moment of significance.

They are rooted in an English culture which is found not only in locality, but also in understatement, and the sideways look. But his poetry has wider reverberations, exploring spirituality and ways of praying as well as momentary glimpses of meaning caught in everyday life. David Scott won the National Poetry Competition in 1978, and this new retrospective draws on all the books he has published since then, from A Quiet Gathering (1984) and Playing for England (1989) to Selected Poems (1998) and Piecing Together (2005), with the addition of a whole collection of new poems.