But, while the essays are often 'hard work', inviting us to grapple with Derrida and Merleau-Ponty, the finer points of linguistics and etymology, they are often also light, playful, beautiful. And each essay, appearing on the right (recto), faces a matching poem. The poetry (printed verso) is usually firmly located on the Isle of Wight, in the Baltic, in a cafe or on the steps of a railway station and is often the beautifully and minutely observed account of an event, action, remembrance, plant or bird. Sometimes the essays explain or offer context for the matching poem, and other times the essay is replaced by a photograph or on of Judy Rodrigues' inveigling paintings.At whatever level you absorb the poetry, read the essays and explore the illustrations, this is remarkable writing - writing that sometimes seems to touch us directly, bypassing the cognitive and, at other times, opens the doors of the mind onto corridors peopled with ideas we had never imagined existed.

Foreword by: J Hillis Miller
Afterword by: Jean-Michel Rabate