As with the dozen or so collections of Geoff Page’s poetry that have preceded it over almost thirty years, Collateral Damage can be opened at random with the certainty that something impressive will be there. One of the most striking characteristics of his published work is its consistent high quality.

A feature of Collateral Damage is the immediacy of the social comment in a number of the poems, the longest of which is ‘Guns’. While it was occasioned by the mad slaughter of small schoolchildren m Dunblane, Scotland, several years ago its message has an urgent if unheeded relevance to the subsequent mass killings in American schools. After itemising his own youthful familiarity with numerous firearms, the poet concludes: