Patrick McGuinness is part Irish and part Belgian by extraction, and Jilted City describes a landscape of the mind which is partially based on childhood memory and has its roots in literature - the author teaches Fresh in Oxford. It is a book which both dallies over and parleys with the French language (the poet's mother tongue), French scenes, French books. This is the rich, resonant, haunting poetry of an in-between poet who inhabits an in-between world.