What to do when everything goes up in flames? Summon up Tom Sastry’s poems, with all their elegant, satirical and hurt-quenching power: here are nightmares and fairytales, museums full of regret, misenchantments and magic for dark times.

Whilst the accelerants of complicity and violence seep from these exacting poems, Sastry’s wit and stoicism slake the bonfire of modern troubles. They defiantly ask us: why do “the great marquees of England” stand empty? How old is your heart? Why aren’t we listening to the sea, and what it has to say? Funny, marvellously frank and often courageous, A Man’s House is on Fire urges us to take a long hard look into the flames and avert the disasters of the heart, home and nations that threaten to befall us all.