A very varied and colourful collection. There are numerous poems about
love, both personal and perhaps fictional. There is a strong awareness
of the real world and Nature in all its varieties (not least in that
very fine and unexpected poem ‘The Roses of Heliogabalus’), but
nevertheless it is the sense of a strong imagination at work that
transforms the Real into Poetry that is so striking about this book.
This is not another volume of careful observations that have been
workshopped out of existence, but something altogether more wild and
meaningful. — Fred Beake What I enjoy most
about Clive’s poetry is its capacity to surprise, to lull the reader
into the promise of the familiar and then completely change their
understanding, their expectations, their view of life itself. These are
poems of nuance and feeling, tactile descriptions and human emotion,
imagination and inventiveness. — Robert Garnham