The Last of the Wallendas

This is a fascinating collection of fifty-two short and haunting poems by the author of such strange and various works as The Mouse and his Child, The Frances Stories, Riddley Walker and the libretto to Harrison Birtwistle's opera The Second Mrs Kong. Most of the poems are characterised by a sense of the mysterious in the familiar: the view from the westbound platform at Notting Hill Station is one of distant scenes and centuries; dragons lurk down plugholes and under carpets; glimpses of old masters and seascapes evoke whimsical cravings. The mood of the collection is always one of quirky contemplation, sometimes light-hearted but often yearning and troubled. Eerily mundane corners of London feature strongly, as do monsters of various kinds, naked statues and rhapsodies based on newspaper clippings. One of these is a meditation on the death of Sergei Preminin, a soviet seaman who sacrificed his life in order to avert the accidental launching of a nuclear salvo. In a typically odd and moving juxtaposition, the dead sailor is visited by a viol player and the dead wife he is mourning in a scene from Tous les Matins du Monde. This is a magical collection which grows more and more interesting as one rereads it.