There are journeys undertaken in these poems – external and interior – but they offer no clear impression of destination or completion. That is not the purpose. What matters is the context and setting – the earth and all its essential elements and facets, a sense of place created by the river, the woods – always the woods which ‘hide as much as cover’ – the land with all its produce, smells, sounds, sights and history – so much history. There is a slight sense of narrative but it is fragmentary, non-linear and piecemeal with the observations and perceptions of one who is a bystander, an outsider.

The poems begin on a path in a wood with a linguistic game – the points of a path, the play of a path – and then there is a sequence ‘Six consecutive walks to the sluices’ where each poem is concerned with…