Ian has been a mainstay of the Picador list for many years, and his endlessly interesting, anecdotal, socially committed, political, historically informed, folklore-drenched, quotable and musical poetry has been a huge influence on the generations which have followed him. This is a retrospective of his last half-dozen or so books, with the addition of a couple of new pieces, including an elegy for the late Ciaran Carson. Ian is contemporary poetry's great social historian, and has wise and powerful things to say about community, family, love, the connection between a people and their land and locale, racism and disenfranchisement; his not yet having a Selected is something of a glaring omission, as far as the contemporary scene is concerned, given he has about twelve well-known anthology pieces in his oeuvre.