Signs, Music

'I became fatherless at 26 and a fatherat 35 and whenever I look outthe living room window I feel myselfbecome the child left alone in the house' Centred around two lyric poems on imminent fatherhood and the birth of a child, Signs, Music is a book about masculinity, fatherhood, and love. The speaker, looking backwards to his late father and forwards to his new son, prepares to become a parent for the first time. Meditating on the cognitive and emotional dissonances between the 'hypothetical' and the 'real' of becoming a father, this irreversible transition causes the poet's 'lines [to] lead towards my father (again!)

'. Charting the ways parenthood disrupts the poet's sense of self, and how the pain of the past triggers fears of 'fatherly failure', Signs, Music is a staggeringly profound collection from one of Britain's most adept poets writing today.