'Philip Salom’s major new collection explores human and natural existence - as life-force and loss, and for diverse symptoms of achievement and folly. His intense scrutiny gives air to the unavoidable complexity of voices raised and voices ignored. Whether it’s injury and mortality (our own) or disturbance and urgency (our climate), Salom uses a subtle insight and a roving, inventive wit to create interweaving fugues through time and memory. Within this, his fifteenth collection, the KGB might even read a brilliant taxonomy of their leader with enough alarm to ensure the poet is fed calming tea. But these are serious times, and these poems are meditative acts of witness.'(Publication summary)
