Angus Calder

Angus Calder Poems

Angus Calder Biography

Angus Lindsay Ritchie Calder (5 February 1942 – 5 June 2008) was a Scottish academic, writer, historian, educator and literary editor with a background in English literature, politics and cultural studies. He was a man of the Left, and in his highly influential book on the home front in the Second World War he complained bitterly that the postwar reforms of the Labour government, such as universal health care and nationalization of some industries, were an inadequate reward for the wartime sacrifices, and a cynical betrayal of the people's hope for a more just postwar society. Angus Calder was born on 5 February 1942. His father, Lord Ritchie Calder (1906–1982), was a noted science writer, humanist and pacifist. His siblings are Nigel Calder, mathematician Allan Calder and educationist Isla Calder (1946–2000). His nephew is Simon Calder. Calder read English literature at King's College, Cambridge, and wrote a doctorate at the University of Sussex, on politics in the United Kingdom during World War II. His book, The People's War: Britain 1939–1945, was published in 1969.)

The Best Poem Of Angus Calder

Crab

Four crabs from the cold firth
alive for a shilling. The largest
reared in the pot, in spite of
the fierce water, but soon
we cracked his limbs with our teeth
and wheedled with spoons and fingers
for the last shreds of flesh
from the crannies of his briny body.

In that brittle maze
I found no features to remind me
of our brains, our livers
or our smooth bellies, yet doubtless
their functions were held by some part
of the paste of his cavities.

Spread, soup and risotto -
only the gills were rejected.

In the days we ate him
I did not forget
his moment on the floor
to amuse the baby, when she
gloated at the slow clash
of his last menace,
nor that shape which made me think
of a soft soldier
fried in the cockpit of a tank.

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