A lively collection populated by historical icons, each poem a story about the potency of imagination, territories, border-crossings of the mind - among them: the madness of a king who wants to be a swan, Michelangelo chiselling a heart that beats into his David, Tsar Peter with his three pet dwarfs acting as generals in the army, Vera Zasulich who became the world’s first woman terrorist, Robinson Crusoe hunting for the footprints of Friday, Michael Jackson pretending he is Marcel Marceau as he woos Marlene Dietrich in Paris.