Quixotic in his hapless drive to know everything in a world where nature itself is elusive, the narrator of these 95 free-verse poems struggles with his impulse to study and think when there is little that can be understood as language can be deceiving and history proposes and then disposes its patterns. Looking for a hidden order and raising big questions in his wake, the narrator takes on the universe, human nature, and the meaning of it all.

What Must Happen has concerns which might be grouped under three headings. First there are personal, mainly elegiac poems that recall parents, relations and friends. The second grouping, including the title poem, has poems on wider historical subjects some of which relate to the personal through Wainwright's recollections of his upbringing and the history of the Potteries. This group also includes a series of contemporary characterisations of some of the Roman gods. Thirdly the collection includes some extensive sequences best described as 'variations' in that they reiterate and vary...