Kevin Brophy begins this selection of his poetry, tracing back to the early 1980s, with a book-length section of new poems, the fruit of the past five years of writing. His five previous poetry volumes are all represented with substantial selections reviewed widely, those books are now out of print.

The new work comes from a poet who has long made rich, intimate, lyrical and disturbing poetry about Melbourne's inner-northern urban streets and backyards, about memory and family, and more lately about the seemingly natural surrealism of the mind. The domain is home to psychology, and perhaps philosophy. But the tracking of thought in Brophy's poems is continually grounded in the senses, and he is alert to the uniqueness of ordinary human occasions. He is a master of tonality and nuance.