136 x 217mm, 122 pages, Black & white printing, Perfect bound, Softcover, 2026

For Melville, as for Wordsworth before him, the child is father to the man, but he knows too that in the twenty-first century clouds are no longer lonely – they come in packs, designed just for you. Melville’s poems let you see, as if for the first time, what’s inside these packs once you open them: child-killing tanks, over-priced degrees in Butchery where the Sirloin Display Cabinet remains permanently out of reach, killer robins in the snow, class war, and the small hands of Donald Trump signing Executive Order 14208 to end the use of paper straws and bring back plastic. The experience, paradoxically, is strangely uplifting – “You need the dark / to show the light” – and it restores to us the simplicity of what matters: “kissing / your beautiful mouth / with full red lips / O / gloss!

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