I wake early these summer mornings, birds are singing,
Our corporate monkey wheels are stilled, the covers
On keyboards, streets ungridlocked, roof slates shining,
From shore to shore pale feet jut from humped duvets
Sampans drift past crumbling gilt pagodas;
Sinuous lizards ripple green jungle floor.
I listen to time sing: of the more stars than are
Sandgrains on Earth's beaches. Of loves and murders.

from 'Haydn and the Fish'

Andrew Waterman's themes encompass love and loss, the human textures of England and the hurt and hope of Ireland, our core existential plight. He ranges from lyric intensity to narrative abundance. In the vivid land- and cityscapes subtle epiphanies occur.
In Collected Poems the poet has selected and revised all the poems he wishes to preserve from his previous books, Living Room (1974), From the Other Country (1977), Over the Wall (1980), Out for the Elements (1981), In the Planetarium (1990) and End of the Pier Show (1995). He has added others, formerly uncollected as well as a wealth of recent work. Collected Poems 1959-1998 enacts in a dislocated world a spiritual odyssey which manages to unify richly diverse material. Wit is its cutting edge, at times the exhilarating solace of a poet who believes poets 'should be poachers, not gamekeepers', in whose work art's truths, heartrending and celebratory, disturb the fixed categories by which we would render life tamable.