Will Eaves' first book of poems explores several continents, moods and
stages of life. Common experience - of growing up, growing older, losing
a parent, being in love, enjoying the natural world in all its nearness
and remoteness - provides his themes. Wherever they are set, in the
Australian bush or in a West Country sickroom, the poems keep faith with
the consolations that come from close observation and stillness.
Well-loved authors and books appear suddenly; hair-raising anecdotes and
football matches become occasions for elegiac comedy; music and domestic
ritual raise ghosts.
Both formal and informal, funny and sad, these lyrical poems seek out a
strangeness in the everyday: in the transformational territory of
childhood and the equally uncertain adult world of grief and loss.
Cover image: Isolated House, 4 (detail), copyright (c) Harry Adams, by
kind permission of the artist.