Developing and expanding the explorations of previous works, this mature collection invokes shepherds and farm laborers, lakes and swimmers, and the changes of the seasonsamid a play of light and shade, abandon and reserve. Suffused with the scents and colors of the Mediterranean landscape, these quietly thoughtful poems choose subtle over obvious effects yet convey an astoundingforce and beauty. Meditating upon erotic and rural themes, these poemsreveal an affirmation of the unending power of language through short love lyrics, portrait poems, anecdotes, satirical epigrams, and beautifully...

Robert Wells was born in Oxford in 1947. He has worked as a woodman, a teacher and in publishing. His Collected Poems and Translations (Carcanet Press) appeared in 2009.

'...quietly determined and original...for more than 30 years he has pursued the question of landscape, how it might be lived in and worked in, recorded and celebrated.'
- Charles Bainbridge, The Guardian.

'Wells inherits a faith in a poem as a thing in itself, that has value in a real world as well as an idyllic one'
- Tom Payne, Times Literary Supplement.

This pamphlet contains fifteen new...