Night - David Harsent

Among The Poems That Open Night, David Harsents Follow-up To His Forward Prize-winning Collection Legion, Is A Startling Sequence About A Garden - But A Garden Unlike Any Other. It Sets The Tone For A Book In Which The Sureties Of Daylight Become Uncertain: Dark, Unsettling Narratives About What Wakes In Us When We Escape Our Day-lit Selves To Visit A Place Where The Dream-like And The Nightmarish Are Never Far Apart. The Book Culminates In The Seductive And Brilliantly Sustained 'elsewhere', A Noirish, Labyrinthine Quest-poem In Which The Protagonist Is Drawn Ever Onward Through A Series Of Encounters And Reflections Like An After-hours Orpheus, Hard-bitten And Harried By Memory.