Fifty-four new poems from Ruth Carr. By turns subtle, radiant, and hard-hitting, this work touches on subjects as diverse as childhood, memory, faith, nature, injustice, free school milk, the comfort of rain, relationships with peers and partners, parents and children, wild birds and pets, art and aging, not forgetting Grendel's mother, the subterfuges deployed by suffragettes, and the world view of Anglo-Saxon warriors.

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 uncertainties.

This is work that (almost) always looks towards the light, is distinguished by a powerful faith in our collective and individual 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.