Dandelion Child

Frances White's many interests are revealed in this fine collection : the natural world, childhood, music, poetry, family and friends, religious faith, the wider world. Her achingly moving late poems underline her ability to be bracingly honest. Readers will be drawn to her evocations of childhood in Mountain Mist, 'We thought clouds were soft shape-shifters' and of adolescence in Dandelion Child, 'a lull/before hot summers/the rush of freedom/music in the air/wild flowers in our hair/and then the longing/for red roses'