Colin Simms is a freelance naturalist, poet and motorcycle enthusiast, who is based in a remote part of northern England. Amongst his particular fields of expertise as a naturalist is the mustelidae family - otters and martens, both European and North American. While doing scientific field work, Colin Simms also writes poems about the animals he studies - poems that owe much to the example of Basil Bunting and the Pound tradition, and have a wonderfully gnarled music about them. This volume collects almost 150 of his poems about otters and martens, drawn from his entire writing career. Although he has published widely in magazines and with small presses for more than 30 years this is Simms' first full-scale book to be made available through the trade. It will delight animal-lovers and poetry-lovers alike. "Simms's ancestor, poetically, is Basil Bunting, for whom the sound of the poem was also important. But I think that Simms's other ancestors are the millions of people over the years who've lived in the country alongside otters and martens and who've described them to each other with no thought of creating poetry from them, and maybe that's Simms's greatest achievement - he gives the language of nature back to those who created it in woods and hill-sides as they struggled to articulate what they'd seen... Colin Simms isn't an easy poet, but I think he's a major one, and I recommend this book absolutely." (Ian McMillan, Yorkshire Post) "The poet-naturalist, Colin Simms, the heir to his mentor Basil Bunting's high modernist poetry and high-fell walking, has spent fifty years writing and rewriting about [the] bond the watcher has with a landscape. His latest collection carries a quiet moral authority... is lyrically potent, yet is only given voice 'under the breath' and 'mutters'." (Leo Mellor, Times Literary Supplement) "Wildlife enthusiasts should enjoy the tales and descriptions in this book and it might even give them a taste for strongly crafted wordwise poetry. At the same time, poetry-lovers might find in this book an insight into the fascinating world of these creatures. It is a book ready to delight both sets of readers." (Gerald England, NHI Review) Colin Simms is a freelance naturalist, poet and motorcycle enthusiast, who is based in a remote part of northern England. Amongst his particular fields of expertise as a naturalist is the mustelidae family - otters and martens, both European and North American.