‘Playing with quicksilver is what poets do. Like children gently prodding the mercury and marvelling at the weightlessness of what appears heavy, the fleetness of what should be slow, the formation of one from what was many, poets do not feel the danger their material conceals …’

Our August reads include The Erratics by Vicki Laveau-Harvie, The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller, Unlike the Heart: A Memoir of Brain and Mind by Nicola Redhouse, and Brute by Emily Skaja.

‘Language has always been the tool I choose to work with … I think that there is no end to what we can do with language and no end to what we can learn about it, and from it.’