In The Blue Coat, Elizabeth Smither examines the quotidian and the quirky for resonance, for contemplation, for verve. Here ‘poetry has a place among other bodies’, but also in enclosed gardens, in Chinese restaurants, in margins and in memory – ‘sometimes open and hospitable, sometimes secret, behind dark hedges’.

Whimsical and tender, this latest collection demonstrates Smither’s talent for illuminating the poetry in the everyday – an out-of-season daffodil, a chipped Limoges plate. She is a master of the unfolding poem, in lines that take you from a single image to the cusp of something larger. At times meditative, at times playful, even slightly subversive, this collection impresses with a surety of word, a deft touch and a polished harmony.