In Careful What You Wish For, one of the country's best-loved poets writes with a new formal range and candour. Moving between past and present, tenderness and the surreal, Matlock and London, his poems live in the in-betweens, marked by the author's wit and energy, a generous saudade. His subjects range from rare teapots and games of tennis with Ken Dodd, to the letters of Robert Lowell and the French of St Exupéry. The undertone hums with the soundtrack of 70s Britain, How would I know? Why should I care? / The Zombies sang that then / and they're still singing it.