Isle Full of Noises, Kevin Densley's sixth collection, has everything you would expect from this witty, allusive poet - wry observations on the intersection of low and high culture, biting academic satire, rollicking yarns from the underbelly of history - but with a new, fascinating twist: an intense emphasis on the physicality of everything. Sound, particularly, leaps in fizzing profusion from every page. The swish of severed heads, childhood fish lifting and slapping out their names, the howls of suburban acrimony, art so intense it licks into flame - all that lurks under the skin of experience made startlingly present.

In language at once robust and delicate, surgical and knockabout, Isle Full of Noises pries open the cracks of life in search of its guts: the blandishments of sex, art, alcohol; excitement, disappointment; the noises of wisdom as it drags itself up to the surface. From squib to disquisition, ekphrasis to historical recreation, the collection sings.

Get a copy, sit down and listen

James Roderick Burns

Co-editor, Presence, author of Crows at Dusk