The Noise of a Fly is the first collection from Douglas Dunn in sixteen years & the first since he was awarded the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry in 2013 It is a book brimming with warmth mischief & a self-deprecating humour as well as with a charming ' Larkinesque' crankiness a quarrel with ageing an impatience with youth the grievousness of losing friends & colleagues But for all its intimate hearthside rumination this is a volume of poems that looks outward in equal measure at Scottish independence British politics & an international refugee crisis & reflects unflinchingly on what it is to consider oneself a contributor to society Penned with a dexterous wit & a steady nerve The Noise of a Fly is a mesmeric imagining of our later years by one of this country's most senior & celebrated writers' It is hard to think of many poets who can equal his combination of imaginative ambition formal resource & range of tone Written on these terms poetry is a matter of permanent urgency' Sean O' Brien' The most respected Scottish poet of his generation' Nicholas Wroe