Footsteps

In this latest short volume of poems, Jo Rippier shows how his love of nature has increased, developed and deepened through his recent volumes of poetry as he envies the arctic fox and admires precariously preserved idyllic landscapes. In 'Temporal', he fuses mortality and summer into an image of peacefully combined opposites. His description of the artistically observant church visitor's reaction, in 'Regarding a Church', creeping away 'uncomforted' and 'uncomfortable at registering expectations somehow unfulfilled' will remain a compelling image for the reader as it formulates that fleeting experience many people have without being able to say what it was that left them faintly uneasy. A memorable collection, and as with Rippier's earlier volumes, one of Gerhard Elsner's superbly evocative watercolours decorates the dustjacket.