In one of these charming buildings, the pen
of a general is scratching something elaborate
and carefully worded; it is a treaty or an abdication,
he forgets which. Twice a day his boots sound
in the portico. The marble is spotless.

from ‘The Republic of the Husband’

Lucy Tunstall’s striking début collection features a cast of characters ranging from Paul Muldoon and Marianne Moore to Aunt Jane, who fell in love ‘in 1956, or thereabouts’, and Cousin Gillian, who keeps the family’s long-case clock in her caravan (‘Some people do not think this is an appropriate arrangement’). Using a variety of registers and forms, including dramatic monologue, lyric, collage and found text, Tunstall explores poetry’s negotiations of truthfulness and theatricality, accuracy and artifice. Perceptive and humorous, but never sentimental, she reaches into the deep emotions that lie beneath inhibition and the conventions that govern ordinary and extraordinary lives.