Closing Time

Past and present often co-exist in these fresh, unflinching poems; childhood merges with old age, as the gains and losses of life are explored with clear-sighted tenderness and Page's characteristic precise observation and luminous imagery. His wry humour is also a delight; surreal fantasies of unlikely encounters and their consequences; ghosts jostle '...for space at the bar with their/more illustrious predecessors'. This is a collection where the poet's ghosts are brought into the light, and celebrated. Catherine Smith, poet