Alexander Pope at Twickenham

<p>Accompanying Alan Wall's <em>Gilgamesh</em> is his new collection of shorter poems and sequences the centrepiece of which is the London section in which the author inhabits the clothes of a number of old masters who have lived in London or its environs: Alexander Pope of course but also Thomas More Johnson Coleridge Keats Burton Rosenberg Pound and others. Then 'Lenses' deals with Alexander Topcliffe an early astronomer and the unlucky Marsyas also makes an appearance: the cast of characters is extensive and each is presented with the skill of a novelist mixed with the precision of the poet.</p>