Old words never come easy. In his new collection of poetry, Michael Glover celebrates the unexpected arrival in his life of a fabulous Harlequin-Fish, plays fast and loose with the dyspeptic ghost of the poet Thomas Gray (author of ‘Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard’) spars and spats with an absent god called Gottlieb, meanders through the aftermath of an old man’s sad encounter with Cupid, and wonders what a stone might say if it ever encountered Amelia in all her ferocity.