The Milk Thief

Paul Henry’s new collection is full of humanity clarity and compassion, balanced by a lightness of tone and manner, a mood signifying joy. The poignancy of memory is evoked with a careful, personal eloquence, particularly in the sequence The Visitors, crowded with characters from the poet’s childhood. Elsewhere the scene is contemporary, the parks, shops, and muddled urban landscape, the settings as varied as Cardigan Bay seascapes to industrial Gwent to the author’s hometown of Newport, in Wales, where beauty rests alongside dereliction.