Luminous and searching, tender and witty, The Visitations develops and deepens the themes that emerged in Kathryn Simmonds’ acclaimed debut, Sunday at the Skin Launderette. Here are poems where the physical and metaphysical meet, where questions of new motherhood are set against those of faith and the larger conundrum of how to live. The tone is often simultaneously satirical and elegiac and the collection abounds with sudden moments of strange illumination: a lime tree strikes up a conversation; a life coach finds an old passport; an infant teeters on the brink of speech.

‘A wonderful lazy music which never puts a foot wrong, like dancing with Gertrude Lawrence to a tune by Cole Porter.’ – Hugo Williams