I first discovered Nick Laird when leafing through a stack of old Mays anthologies in the bookshop in St Edmund's passage; his poems leapt out from the pages as significant. Since graduating from Sidney a decade ago, he's published one novel and two volumes of poems: the latest, On Purpose, won the Somerset Maugham prize last year.

The poems are like riddles, chiming with diverse reference - one poem, entitled Search Engine, illustrates the diversity of the writer's world with a list of phrases running from Chomsky versus Saussure to off-roading magazines to history of Powerade. Another, ‘Press,' lists the diversity of American newspapers, ‘The Oregon Emerald, the Forty-Niner.' Across the collection, a broad swoop of reference asserts itself with the surety that begins one poem, ‘Mandeville's Kingdom' with the sigh ‘Of Dog-Headed Men and the Juggernaut,/ I have spoken, I think.' One poem celebrates the life of a pug puppy - ‘The Buddha would have liked you' - another describes an Auschwitz relief worker's reaction to a surprise shipment of lipstick.

At points in this broad world, focus falls with great intensity on detail - ‘Holiday of a Lifetime' contemplating a found jigsaw piece over eight stanzas, or the lawn described with ‘each blade/ alert and bidding for the same/ thinning, wintry light.' At others, we are taken into the poet's world with a striking directness; one poem entitled ‘Offensive Strategy' begins frankly ‘Lately the tablets are making no difference.'One poem, ‘Use of Spies,' is faced by a blank page and describes a sunrise to an absent loved one; it ends with the isolated line ‘I thought I'd have to try and tell you that.' This line could apply to the whole collection - behind a riddling web of reference and close detail, we slip behind thin lines into the poet's consciousness, in order to see through his eyes.

Laird works skilfully with rhyme and rhythm. There are examples of tight form here, including ‘The Immigration Form,' which uses the insistent repetition of the villanelle to eerie effect, but Laird's real strength is in his flexible rhythms and chiming half-rhymes - as in the conclusion to ‘Hunting is a Holy Occupation,' one of my favourite poems of the collection, ‘licking my hands after eating, waiting,/ to learn if God exists, I hate him.' It is this faintly
musical tone, close to the natural rhythms of conversation, which gives these poems their natural voice, and particular charm.

Colette Sensier