Ship of the Line

Winner of the 2016 Edwin Morgan Poetry Award. SHIP OF THE LINE is a museum in which objects whisper inviting stories: the bed a king may not have slept in, a school of taxidermy animals, a peal of wedding bells. Sailors are shipwrecked and dredged up on the coast, while the poet journeys across England, sometimes walking through fields or bicycling over country hills, and at others times journeying through documents, meeting vivid characters that peek out of the footnotes. This book is a grand exhibition, gathering oddments from history, and floodlighting them for all to see.