Cicadas in their Summers represents more than twenty years' writing: it includes a book-length collection of new poems, Rodney Pybus's first from Carcanet, and selections from three earlier volumes. It is marked by a concern for the ways we treat each other and our landscapes, rural and urban. Connections between people and places in history are explored through dramatic monologues, and in other poems Pybus explores his personal background, the north of England (Tyneside and Cumbria)and Sydney, New South Wales.