A powerful new voice in contemporary verse. From the streets of a Belfast childhood to wandering in Downtown New York, from meditations on life in rural, cathedral-town Sussex to the deep, flowing rivers of desire, this first collection of poetry from Mike Jenkins mixes the numinal with the everyday, the earthy with the spiritual, and the romantic with the carnal.

With stories of hope, love, and happiness in fleeting moments, and pain, longing, and despair in others, these poems are never less than beautiful, honest, and breathtakingly original – sharing the voices of mothers, fathers, lovers, and – at times – of darkness itself. But at the heart of this collection is a simple idea: trying to capture the essence of moments that are sometimes more powerful than the pen.