Back in August 2020 my intention was to use this blog to draw readers’ attention to debut collections, but as time went on I decided to vary the content by occasionally inviting more established poets to share insights into their new works. Well, they don’t come more established than Sanjeev Sethi. The quality of his work has rightly earned international acclaim and Wrappings in Bespoke (Hedgehog Poetry Press, 2022) can only add to those accolades.

Perhaps the poem that provides the clearest insight into what to expect when one reads his newest collection is Wishes for a Child I Never Had. As well as being a statement of his view on the qualities that allow children to flourish in the ‘williwaw’ of life, I believe it also characterises the significant features of Sethi’s poetry. For example, in the second stanza he writes: ‘May the marrow in your bones…