The poems in Tamar Yoseloff’s Belief Systems act as a call to make something worthwhile from the wreckage of our world, in the spirit of the radical artists she evokes, such as John Latham, John Cage and Robert Rauschenberg – visionaries who located power and beauty in what is forgotten.

Yoseloff’s poems intimately capture the artists at thought and at work – composing, repurposing and finding new life in the borders and liminal spaces. Alive with decay and regrowth, this collection leads us through a movement of seasons, along wild pathways and through stormy weather, finding places of transformation where nature, music and art thrive at the margins. Ultimately, Belief Systems point us towards the vital human acts of Illumination and imagination in this hyper-accelerated age – where ‘the small blue flame / like a pilot flame’ casts light on the mysteries of creation and existence.