Thaw

When a thunderstorm's dark reverberations glimmer 'in the night-sky of the head', or when apricots generate an edible appreciation of 'soft time', we discover Charles Bennet's lyrical and powerful poems revealing the impact of nature in memorable, unexpected and sometimes unusual ways.

This fascinating collection concerns itself with forms of melting: fluid interfaces between natural and human environments. Beginning and ending in gardens, it explores aspects of experience informed and affected by close observation. Time and again, whether in the form of a blackbird's tuneful message, a seashell's glossy interior, or the smell of fresh rain, our relationship with ecology is reinvigorated. Delighted, rapturous and occasionally disturbing, this is a collection enthralled by the sensual delights of the natural world and its creatures.

"'should we / have been listening more / and listening harder?' Charles Bennett wonders in 'Planting Apricots'.

But it's difficult to imagine poems that listen more closely than these to the 'green music' of the natural world.

At play is a sensibility which - alert to happenstance and to the lives of plants and creatures - willingly finds a common ground that furnishes moments of quiet transcendence.

The vivid precision of the image-making attests to the thoughtful rigour of this poet's attention.

A sow was never before 'like a lake of treacle' but will always be so now."

Katharine Towers