like these words
forever fragments
uncomplete
themselves once
more

our conversation
will elide
sliding meanings
into silence
the hang of it

from ‘Uncompletement’

Leaf Graffiti, Lucy Burnett’s first collection, is restless, the poems always moving, playfully exploring the interface between words and things, rural and urban, nature and the human world. Fascinated by sequence, repetition and variation, the poet uses words, and the white spaces surrounding them, as raw materials: ‘i lay these words before your mind like bricks / yet tentative’. The music of her work, and the urgency of her themes, propel us towards conclusions that can nonetheless only ever be provisional: ‘if further centres / further into circles / if the weight of the world / is a story cupped in cumulus’. Leaf Graffiti is an innovative and passionate debut collection.