Harm

The poems in this, Alan Jenkin''s third collection, speak of the harm done and suffered - most frequently in the name of love - in the course of lives gone adrift among lost causes, chance meetings and missed chances. A new directness and simplicity, and throughout, a raw urgency of personal feeling, inform a voice that is as resourceful as in Jenkin''s earlier volumes, and continues to salvage a ''fugitive lyricism'' (as one reviewer put it) from harsh and dissonant realities. ''By turns jocular, disquieting, sexy and inventive''-PETER READING, SUNDAY TIMES ''Jenkins'' poetry is exhilarating. . . It is charged with erotic energy, rage, sorrow and confusion''-TLS ''Stylish, Savage, unforgiving''-HUGO WILLIAMS, SUNDAY TELEGRAPH ''Jenkins has a restless mind: following his poetry gives his readers a rocky ride, but also a rewarding one. ''-PETER PORTER, OBSERVER.