‘Michael Symmons Roberts’s Selected Poems brings together six collections of his frequently-prize-winning poetry. His oeuvre, at this stage, is remarkable; it is worth repeating that he is unlike any poet currently writing; he is, in his own realm, the nonpareil of British poetry… inimitable, the exemplar that other poets hanker after but can’t parody or echo, not only because he is an unusually gifted technician but because he busts wide open the many no-go areas of human experience, notably the world of the spirit, even the nature of soul, that loaded word most poets stare at, occasionally prod and weigh, but in the end, have no understanding to what meaningful purpose it should be put.’ PBS BULLETIN ON SELECTED POEMS