‘There is no such thing/as refuge or retreat’ ends one of the poems after layering vivid image on image, leaving us changed for the experience of reading. And it happens again and again—embodied, specific, clear images that deliver meaning that is integral to the experience yet surprising and new. And along the way the emotions build, not from being told or hammered home, but because we are allowed to sense them so deeply that we are able, also, to feel them: the loneliness and the tenderness, the sadness that is reflected back in the green eye of a piece of polished malachite, the loss that lurks in the corner of an office, the romance and the longing. This is a collection to savour, full of words that haunt, it pulls us back to find another layer of meaning, and another…