To love you in shadow as in the light
is light itself. In subterranean night
you sow the fields with fireflies of delight.
Lanarkshire holds you, under its grim grass.
But I hold what you were, like a bright glass
I carry brimming through the darkening pass.


from `The Glass'

In `A Voyage', which opens Edwin Morgan's new book, he takes a cinematic risk, evoking the journey of the human sperm from ejaculation to fertilisation. Broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 1996, the poem opened new possibilities on the air as it does on the page. It belongs with Morgan's poems of space exploration, celebrating the chanciness and heroism of this most primal risk, and with his poetry of science. It also belongs with his love poems, performing a comprehensive synthesis of concerns.

Three sequences complete this ambitious book. `Beasts of Scotland' was commissioned by the Glasgow International Jazz Festival and set to music by the saxophonist Tommy Smith. Like `The Five-Pointed Star', written for the Burns Bicentenary of 1996, `Beasts' shows how commissioned, occasional poetry can at once honour and transcend its occasion. The title sequence of fifty triplet poems considers the consequences to reality of notions of `virtual reality'. Once again Morgan displays his versatility and his rooted passion for language, for place and for real people living in a modern world that can merit celebration, laughter and (however hard-won) joy. No wonder his work, with its Scottish and European perspectives, is at once sophisticated and popular.