Roy Fisher is known internationally for his witty, anarchic poetry which plays the language, pleasures the imagination and teases the senses. But he is at heart an English Midlander. In ‘Standard Midland’, he confronts and worries at nuances of perception and the politi of understanding. Many of the poems are concerned with landscapes, experienced, imagined or painted, particularly the scarred and beautiful North Midlands landscape in which he has lived for nearly thirty years. Shortlisted for the 2010 Costa Poetry Award, ‘Standard Midland’ contains work mostly written since his Bloodaxe retrospective ‘The Long and the Short of It: Poems 1955-2005’ and his texts for the artist’s book ‘Tabernacle’, his recent collaboration with Ronald King. Publication coincided with his 80th birthday. Critic Peter Robinson published an 80th birthday festschrift with Shearsman Books, ‘The Unofficial Roy Fisher’, with contributions by Fisher’s many admirers at the same time.