'This new collection by Joanne Burns - her thirteenth - investigates and appraises spiritual and religious experiences, the traces they leave, and their impact on language. Amphora opens with an extended sequence on the lives of saints, narrated by the veteran of a Catholic upbringing, and a single-sex, convent school. These poems are populated by nuns and martyrs, pilgrims, priests and deities from both Eastern and Western religions.' [Publisher's blurb]