All We Know Is All We See

"Bob Cooper's poetry moves from the Highlands' great outdoors to the back streets of Newcastle, via a stroll around the Lake District shadowing the phantom of William Wordsworth. In each territory he's convincingly at home: open, observant, compassionate, rendering experience with a clarity which has won him competition after competition and which, with this collection, will win him readers. His climbing poems are reminiscent of the zen intensity of Gary Snyder, while his Duddon sequence brings that freedom and sense of landscape to the sonnet. He then plunges into urban life with gusto, a keen eye and keen ear, doing for Newcastle something of what Edwin Morgan did for Glasgow."

W.N. HERBERT

"I'm very pleased to see a first full collection from Bob Cooper. It's a long-awaited and impressive debut of well crafted, intelligent, and entertaining poems. This is indeed a varied yet distinctive voice that's a pleasure to hear.

In Between Heaven And Chillingham Road he brings the people, the sounds and soul of Tyneside to us admirably.

BRENDAN CLEARY

Reviewed by Deborah Tyler-Bennett in New Hope International.