Nick Drake

Nick Drake’s fourth collection, Out of Range, explores the strange interconnections and confronting emergencies – the signs, wonders and alarms - of the early 21st century. 

Here are elegies for the Whitechapel Fatberg and incandescent lightbulbs; the life stories of plastic bottles and ice-core samples; portraits of those living on the margins of the city streets, and of Voyager 1 crossing the threshold of the solar system.  The past echoes in poems about the ancient artists who recorded their presence in cave art, a Spanish missionary thrilled by an Aztec ball game, and a story of gay love from the Song dynasty. Here too are poems registering the shock and impact of ‘Generation Anthropocene’ on Earth’s climate and ecology. 

Above all, the poems seek to tune in to what is out of range; the dark matter of mystery, wonder and deep time at the edge of our senses, at the back of our heads, which poetry makes visible.

'This is absolutely modern poetry, at once haunting and unsettling, but in other places funny and moving. It weaves together these various strands of wonder and horror and in so doing, captures the confusion we all live with as we navigate the planet as human animals in the 21st century.' - Oxford Poetry Library (Book of the Week), on Out of Range

'These poems celebrate proximity and distance - spatial, temporal or emotional - to remark on the state we're in. Written with poignancy, formal facility and intense honesty, they take the reader on a journey through known worlds and into unknown ones.' - Nancy Campell, ClimateCultures [on Out of Range]

'Nick Drake’s poetry is usually grounded in everyday contemporary experience, but his imagination also enjoys travelling, following the routes of good but accessible science.' - Carol Rumens, Poem of the Week, Guardian.com [on Out of Range]

‘Subtle, funny and tremendously moving. He has an eye for the small detail as well as the big picture. These poems brilliantly evoke time and place.’ – Jackie Kay [on The Man in the White Suit]

Nick Drake on being Nick Drake

Nick Drake reads his poem ‘Live Air’ (from his collection From the Word Go) about the other Nick Drake, the 70s singer-songwriter whom he has sometimes been mistaken for, and then discusses all the other sides of being this Nick Drake, not just a poet but a writer known for his work in many other fields and yet with poetry being his first love. Pamela Robertson-Pearce filmed him reading poems from his Bloodaxe collections at his home in Hackney, London, in February 2019. These are split into four sets posted as separate videos.

Nick Drake: poems on climate change

Nick Drake reads six poems on climate change, all from Out of Range, beginning with three Arctic poems written following his participation in Cape Farewell’s trip to Svalbard, ‘Fold up the charts’, ‘the ice core sample’ and ‘Dear mortals’, followed by ’Stranger Thing’ (on the Whitechapel Fatberg), ’Still Life: Plastic Water Bottle (used), and ‘Chronicle of the Incandescent Lightbulb’. Pamela Robertson-Pearce filmed him reading poems from his Bloodaxe collections at his home in Hackney, London, in February 2019. These are split into four sets posted as separate videos.

Nick Drake: poems on love and loss

Nick Drake reads six poems on love and loss: ‘The Very Rich Hours’ and ‘The Cure’ (from The Man in the White Suit) on the loss of friends to AIDS, three love sonnets, ‘This Love’, ‘A Glass of Water’ and ‘Rainbird’ (from From the Word Go), and ‘From the Song Dynasty’ (from Out of Range) on the lifelong love of two men in medieval China. Pamela Robertson-Pearce filmed him reading poems from his Bloodaxe collections at his home in Hackney, London, in February 2019. These are split into four sets posted as separate videos.

Nick Drake: four poems from Out of Range

Nick Drake reads four poems from his most recent collection, Out of Range: ‘Maenad’, ‘The Foley Artist (take two)’, ‘Grace’ and ‘The Back of Your Head’. Pamela Robertson-Pearce filmed him reading poems from his Bloodaxe collections at his home in Hackney, London, in February 2019. These are split into four sets posted as separate videos.

Nick Drake reads 'The Farewell Glacier' from the Arctic

This video by Matt Wainwright was shot during the Cape Farewell 2010 Arctic Expedition, and shows Nick Drake aboard ship reading one of the poems he wrote during the voyage. Five marine scientists and ten artists from around the world – writers, musicians, visual artists, directors and architects – sailed from Longyearbyen around the north-east coast of Spitsbergen in the Norwegian Arctic to encounter the magnificence of this extreme and threatened environment and engage with the scientific research being conducted on board.