Richard McKane's new collection Out of the Cold Blue (Hearing Eye, 2009) amplifies and vastly expands his first book Amphora for Metaphors (Gnosis Press, New York, and Diamond Press, London, 1993). Peter Levi's words in his Introduction to that collection still hold true: 'Richard McKane's arrival has been long delayed, but now he steps into the rather crowded ranks of the most brilliant poets of the last twenty years or more.' This new collection is a companion volume to Poet for Poet (mainly translations) also published by Hearing Eye and chosen by Helen Bamber OBE as her book on BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs programme.Richard McKane is a poet of the people despite a certain valuable odd quality, possibly brought on by his living in Turkey in the 70s and his immersion in Russian poetry since his studies at Marlborough and Oxford.1989 saw the republication in an expanded version of his Selected Poems of Anna Akhmatova with Bloodaxe Books. From 1988 to 2006 he also worked as an interpreter, at the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture, from and into Turkish and Russian.