Clanchy's verse is immediate and musical, and informed by an acute, ironic intelligence. These are poems about men and boys: married men, self-sufficient men, wounded men, and men `who own/the earth and love it'; poems about memory and time, set in school classrooms and muddy sports fields; and haunting, tender love poems.

Clanchy's second collection, Samarkand, was described variously as `enduringly readable' (Time Out) and `very rewarding' (Times Literary Supplement). With these two collections, Clanchy has established herself as one of the most impressive - and enjoyable - of contemporary poets.

`Kate Clanchy is a real discovery. It's possible to imagine her becoming a genuinely popular poet, not because she writes down to her audience, but because she writes of what we know in such a way that we come to know it better, more sharply, in better colours' Helen Dunmore