[Geoffrey Hill's] poetry is full of high seriousness. You can't miss the noble application of scruples to life. The purged cadences, the bitter medicine of his syntax appeals to the puritan in us: even when the poetry is difficult, obscure and painful to read, we know it is doing us good. It makes no concessions to our intellectual and moral self-esteem. It administers a wonderful snub. Moreover, history [acts] … in a recherché way, as a transparency through which the glare of immediate experience is filtered. [Hill is also an academic poet.]…

[Mercian Hymns] showed just how good this kind of poetry can be. Using the historical, under-documented figure of King Offa, Hill was enabled to write about his unpoetical childhood self: 'Then, leaving Ceolred, he journeyed for hours, calm and alone, in his private derelict sandlorry named Albion.' In context, I find this nearly as moving as...