Fifty-four new poems from Ruth Carr. By turns subtle, radiant, and hard-hitting, this work touches on subjects as diverse as memory, faith, nature, and injustice, not to mention the comfort of rain, the ingenuity of suffragettes, and the case for rehabilitating Grendel's mother.

Carr navigates this eclectic terrain with deftness and humour, filling the reader's head with images that linger long in the memory. As ever, she is disarmingly open about her own doubts and misgivings.

This is work that almost always looks towards the light, is distinguished by a powerful faith in our capacity for betterment, and a quiet but resolute seeking after wholeness:  

But on you go - 
breathe out, breathe in - 
keep on somehow

And almost accidentally, it seems,
you can't tell when,
in quiet work, you find

a kind of synthesis
where whole and broken heart
are intimate.