Driving in the Dark

The poems in Jean Stevens latest collection range through everything from a pub on the North York Moors on a black cloaked night an encounter with a stranger in the dead hours in Soho and jackdaws who come mob-handed to a reflection on Elisabeth Frinks The Walking Madonna an accident on black ice a muddy quad bike and a meeting with Beethoven in Burnley. Among poems inspired by her Yorkshire Dales home (Ive fallen in love with the bones of this place ... where wind meets wind) are accounts of late love - when youve lost your hair your waistline your hearing and your sweating stains the bed and of quietly desolate loss: I thought I saw and heard you... This is a body of work with a beating heart.