This superb collection of poems, each one accompanied by Chris Humphrey’s impressive colour photographs, comprises observations about different walks written in sections that are linked by landscape, small journeys, reflections and moments of vision that are ‘undramatic and intangible but real’.

With ‘Words Inside a Birthday Card’ the poet begins his journey with a choice, for one ‘can go three ways’: alongside a wall, into a churchyard with yew trees or straight ahead towards the river although time is too short and the weather too cold to appreciate the mallards ‘swimming, flying’. Yet he does stop for a robin is singing ‘and going on singing’, a continuity that brings in ‘other birds singing’ so that anyone watching will find they need to listen and go on listening.

A description of insects, halfway to wasps in size, introduces a hint of heaven for they are like ‘a ladder of angels ascending…