Turning the Stones

Alistair Elliot has claimed that anything he puts into a poem, he'll have in the after-life. Earlier books provide food and drink: he's now packing up whole countries, species, friends. Some poems here explain what it's like having a shower with women aged 20 when you're not, how horses express admiration for each other, what people do when world wars approach, and the greenish methods of an Iranian rubbish collector. Elliot continues to vary his scale of operation: there's a sonnet written by Rilke after his death, a biography of Pompey's last wife, and a long poem in couplets about losing boots in Arcadia.