Second Glance , full collection (Oversteps Books, 2022)

'I like the sounds of this writing, especially. Ron Scowcroft writes lines rich with alliteration, assonance and half rhyme.Take this, from ‘Moon Garden’: In shadowless night I dreamed/silver cattle at the crater’s edge. Or this, from ‘The Man Who Could Hear Hiroshima’: An arthritic finger pointed across the river. It’s the language choices that make this reading easy, nothing simplistic about the content, whether he’s writing about love, nature, war, or a cast of care-home characters. He also has a way with endings. They’re often quiet and understated, like little smiles: how close we were, say; or and none of this matters.' 

Charlotte Gann, Frogmore Papers 100th Edition 2022

‘There’s empathy and understated passion in these carefully considered and exquisitely crafted poems … a compassionate but unsettling clear-sightedness probes the heart of his subject.’   Mike Barlow

'The scope of this first collection is remarkable in its breadth. Seriously good poems include tender lyrics, care home life exposed through voices of residents with dementia and staff, and tough atmospheric pieces about men at war . . . rich and surprising turns of phrase with a fine thread of spirituality running through.'  Wendy Klein.

Moon Garden (Wayleave Press, 2014)

'Whether he’s writing about a sheepdog on the Falklands, a constellation or a colony of storks, Ron Scowcroft’s thoughtful and well-honed poems draw you back for futher reading. His practiced ear for just the right word enables him to make ordinary moments uncannily affecting, while also placing them adroitly in their wider context. A poet who never tells you too much but leaves you thinking.' Wayleave Press.

‘Scowcroft has a way with language that causes the ear and mind to take notice at once. He allows for no superfluous word to sit among the finely-hewn lines of each poem.’ Liz Bahs, The Frogmore Papers.

‘These are poems that do not splurge, gush or easily divulge their stories or emotions, but leave enough of a clue to hint at traumas hidden from view.’ Richie McCaffery, Londongrip.

Frogmore Prize (2020)

Of his winning poem Maria Jastrzębska commented: ‘‘Greylags in Fog’, was a poem I returned to for its tenderness. I read it as a love poem. Between people and also between people and nature, the animal world. Everyone can identify with that sense of being lost in a fog – the utter relief of being found. I loved the backward and forwards of the poem’s ‘call and response’. It’s a poem written with the utmost simplicity and spareness capturing something as intangible as a moment. It doesn’t preach or try to convince but tells its story with great lightness of touch.’

Aquarius

Born too early in the year,

roads flooded, sea defences gone

and a white horse in the field

and, of all things, the Zodiac inflatable they came in,

and their torch light

and me blue with cold and the priest in wellingtons

who made it with his chalice and prayer book

and I, who once was gilled like a fish, now gasping, surfacing,

and how beautiful I was

and how, against the odds, I took my name

and how I was told when I was older

of the torn bed sheets

and the ward curtains they wrapped the stillborn in

and how, since then, I swam or set the sails

or held my breath for long enough

or threw a net or cast a line of stars

and how, by water,how fortunate I was to come this far.