The Mermaid's Purse by Fleur Adcock Charlotte Van Den Broeck toxic and oddly gorgeous… Warner

toxic and oddly gorgeous… Warner moves from playful social observation

and her still-contemporary choices: safe solitude

and poet Stephen Burt sets out to help

Further inspiration comes from a curiosity or need to make sense of lived experience and the wider world

Michael Longley

The Mermaid's Purse by Fleur Adcock Charlotte Van Den Broeck toxic and oddly gorgeous… WarnerFleur Adcock began writing the poems in this book when she was 82. The two chief settings are New Zealand, with its multi coloured seas, and Britain, seen in various decades. There are foreign travels, flirtations, family memories, deaths and conversations with the dead. Katherine Mansfield, incognito, dodges an academic conference; theres a lesson in water divining as well as a rather unusual Christmas party. We meet several varieties of small