I Want! I Want!

The title of Vicki Feaver’s remarkable new collection derives from Blake’s illustration of a child standing with one foot on a ladder to the moon, crying ‘I want! I want!’ In the title poem it represents her childhood ambition to be a poet; in another, she rejects pressure towards achievement and longs to return to the sensual world of the earth.

This startlingly honest book follows the ladder of a life for seventy-five years, in poems that show how much is connected. Unlocking the voice ...