‘Lucid, tender and humane . . . One of the most formally agile and compassionate poets of our age’ Fiona Benson

Here you are, on the balcony,
the sea serenading you,
the sun with its armful of light.

In Afterburn, Blake Morrison returns to poetry, his first calling, to offers scenes from his own life and the lives of others. In psychology, ‘afterburn’ refers to the time before a past event is assimilated – an idea that resonates through these poems (which themselves linger after reading) about memory and our attempts to articulate, shape or contain it.

Throughout the collection, not least in two extraordinary sequences – one about his sister, the other about Elizabeth Bishop – the poet sees with new eyes the turning points in a life’s accidental course. What holds his wise, touching, melancholy yet joyful poems together are the small intimacies that bind us to others, under time’s lengthening shadow: ‘you moved too fast for me to catch you / and so did the years.’

Playful and charming, sometimes rakishly so, Afterburn nevertheless reveals an open, and vulnerable, heart.