I shall be in Welwyn Garden City in August, so perhaps I should take some Glyn Maxwell – and maybe I will. I’m also looking forward to reading a sequence of obscene sonnets by Alistair Elliot – not yet publicly available, but instead you could try his latest, Imaginary Lines (Shoestring) or, if you can get hold of a copy, you mucky pups, his translations of Verlaine’s Women–Men (Sheep Meadow Press), though not newly published, are blue as a holiday sky.

I will be rereading W.N.Herbert’s Omnesia (Bloodaxe), which is an amazing book, in the strict sense of ‘amazing’. Helen Farish’s Nocturnes at Nohant (Bloodaxe) is a sustained and breathtaking book-length sequence. Selima Hill’s Gloria: Selected Poems (also Bloodaxe) and Jeremy Hooker’s Master of the Leaping Figures (Enitharmon) are two older books which are tempting me. And Ian Davidson’s pamphlet Into Thick Hair (Wild Honey Press) is a marvel of syllabic verse which anyone ought to read out loud.

Tony Williams’s All the Rooms of Uncle’s Head (Nine Arches) was a PBS Pamphlet Choice, while The Corner of Arundel Lane and Charles Street (Salt) was shortlisted for the Aldeburgh Prize and the Portico Prize. He also writes prose fiction.