Reasons for Winter

Naomi Guttman's first collection of poems marks the appearance of a deeply emotional, highly intelligent new voice. Its theme is intimacy-ours, especially women's, experience of intimacy in many forms, how it marks us, how we long for it, the ways in which it is both our fulfilment and our undoing. The personae range from children to old men and women, jailbirds to schoolgirls; the language is chosen without ever becoming deliberate, precise but always musical. These are poems from and of the heart, chastened by experience, taut with craft.