I’m one of those readers who always keep a stack of books by me; my bedside table pile has an accompanying bedside floor mountain next to it. My handbag inevitably holds three or more books that I’m reading simultaneously.

Perhaps chief among the books I’ve got going are a stack of books by the American poet and essayist Dan Beachy-Quick. A youngish poet (born in 1973), he has been prolific (five full collections of poetry, two books of essays with another due soon, one collection of verse written in collaboration with Srikanth Reddy—plus a number of chapbooks), though he says that he writes his poems slowly, verse accreting day by day with one or two new lines. He describes himself as a nature poet, and that is true; he is also a poet whose work is at times difficult, but always intensely musical. From the first poem (‘North/South Composition’) of his first collection (North True South Bright) the poet’s ear for song comes through. As he contemplates a falcon he writes: