Thirst

<p>Michael Glover's abundant ninth collection of poetry finds him adopting various guises in a range of places mental and physical. In Ireland he squares up to a rabble of indolently imperious sheep those 'ragged kings and queens' of a sequence of poems called Achill Soundings all written in a cottage once owned by the Nobel-Prize-winning German novelist Heinrich Böll. In Dear Bill a sequence part written in Andalucia he pays homage to New Jersey poet and paediatrician William Carlos Williams. In other sequences he makes word-shapes from the odd minimalist music of the 20th century Austrian composer Anton Webern explores the testy to-ings and fro-ings of human relationships in poems addressed to the mysterious Violet and pays sombre tribute to a girl who died far far too young.</p>