Janky Tuk Tuks

Wendy Holborow has done it once again with a splendid new collection, her most ambitious yet, based on her recent visits to India and Africa. It contains a 'fabulous rabble' of rattling good poems, and a chilling short fiction, 'Ngozi', which has a twist guaranteed to shake us out of our habitual complacency about the endemic refugee crises not only in Africa, but around the world. This is no mere word-painting or poetry tourism, although difference is celebrated and the poems are full of wordplay and relish of language for its own sake - 'janky tuk tuks', which refer to Indian scooter-taxis, and the 'nielloed silver' of the Nile are just two memorable examples - and she ingeniously mixes traditional verse forms, open field and concrete poetry to convey the richness of the encounter between her imagination and different cultures. Professor John Goodby