Skin

The ten visionary sequences that make up David Harsent's new collection operate on one another like a planetary system. As elsewhere in Harsent's work, there are 'touchstones' – words, phrases, images and scenes – that reappear as versions of themselves, bringing a compositional depth and dramatic intensity to poems that confront raw and unpacified areas of human experience. His characters carry narratives that charge the whole with an erotic, sometimes hallucinatory energy; his staging is stark and minimal: attentive, always, to what lies beneath the skin.