Smallholding

In her fifth collection, celebrated poet Anne Compton turns her attention to smaller objects — the strangeness of thought that plays around common, everyday things and occasions, such as sleep and meals. Here she is a diarist of her immediate surroundings — of a river, fog in its variations, the reliable return of plant and birdlife. The book arcs from the objects observed to the observing mind, its vagaries and slippages, recalling the persons, places, and things that make up a life.