If I don't know

The comic brilliance and formal skills which propelled Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis and Serious Concerns into the bestseller lists are much in evidence here.

But a softer, lyrical voice, also present in the earlier books, is given more room to develop in poems about gardens and contentment and the poignancy of having something to lose.

If I Don't Know ends with a longer poem, a moving narrative called 'The Teacher's Tale'.

Fireworks Poems (from If I Don't Know) I Faster and faster, They vanish into darkness: Our years together.

II Write it in fire across the night: Some men are more or less all right.