MountainishA narrator and her dog are criss crossing the Swiss Alps. She travels with friends who share her interest in food, languages and their topographical contexts. They collect colours, even look for colourlessness, and develop the idea of a walk in diary, a vain attempt to archive their observations. Gradually, other mountains appear in their observations and memories, as do the mountains of literature and art. Mountains may be sites of fear and awe, of

magnetism and antagonism

While Living is Rosie’s telling of her first year with her mystery illness as she grapples with love

Tania Hershman's work is full of brilliant and passionate observations on dreams

Insects pollinate

one a heroic soldier idolised by the city he defends

His two early collections

In her Selected Poems we see this and more — her uncompromising engagement with the politics of gender and class

t every bit as vital and precious a part of the landscape as other accents and dialects

A young couple wonder whether family life would be easier if they were cuttlefish

as violent

She won the Denis Devlin Memorial Award in 2002

Molly Case