Pebble & I

From the posing of the very first question in the opening poem, ''Fragment of a Victorian Dialogue'', John Fuller''s enquiring and elegiac new collection arrives with a sharp sense of mortality, marked by the passing of time. Pebble & I responds to its own philosophical enquiries by looking to a world of vivid colour and substance. From the sun-baked pebbles and plastic ice-cream spines that bedeck the ''The Jetsam Garden'', to the swallows that nest under the eaves of a farmhouse in the Cilento Hills in ''Stop'', the poems take us from inky, restless seascapes to the warmth of the Mediterranean as they examine the connections between man and ''our material cousins'' in nature.Seductive, yet sometimes playfully absurd, Fuller plumbs the depths with his trademark light touch and deft technical skill. The natural and social worlds can be as cruel as they are thrilling but ultimately the voices in this collection are here to celebrate ''elements of the eternal / In the ceremony of life.''