"In this disarmingly honest first collection, Robert Colman exposes loneliness, loss, and longing, unfolding hard-won insights with surprising delicacy and grace. "How do you cosy to this / silent opening up, disarm long enough / to trust the names we give things, trust ourselves / not to misuse whatever’s given us?" To Colman’s own question, the existence of these poems is an affirming answer."

"It is through our senses that we come to know the physical world, but it is through poetry that we come to understand how we can give that world significance. In this book, Rob Colman embarks on a poetic journey through the real — encountering, recording and displaying the trophies and curiosities of lived experience like specimens in a lexical museum. It is through the products of such expeditions — observation made lyric — that poetry becomes the essential medium of our shared humanity. The poet expands our individual worlds by showing us the way to his own."