I came toLight-fallby Lucy Ingrams (Flarestack Poets, 2019) after hearing the poet read.I was immediately struck by her attention to text, to meanings, sound and cadence so that every syllable seems to justify its location.Most of these poems are set outside, in the woods, in the fields, near the sea but the texts work at different levels,hinting at human stories and drama played out in a context where natural detail is of profound and felt importance.

‘Today’ is constructed around an opposition of self and a loved other where:

you watch the sea from the doorway, while I study grasses…

Self (the poet) is content to focus on close-up detail outside and ‘come back tuned to fine-jointed staves,/ shy-coloured panicles.’ The other, however, looks out to sea and notes the loss of the horizon; together they mourn as ‘a low fleece/of fog wraps the chord-line between’ sea and…