Bells are often associated with the sacred. A resonating bell marks out a space for reverence to inhabit. It calls for attention on the part of the devotee, for a shift in perception from the mundane to the sanctified. A ‘tintinnabulum’ is a small bell, and it is the name that the acclaimed poet Judith Beveridge has given to her latest collection of poems. ‘Tintinnabulation’ – the lingering sound of bells – is a word I first came across in the liner notes to Tabula Rasa, an album of music by the Estonian composer Arvo Pärt that explicitly brings together sound and sacredness.

Pärt is not mentioned in Beveridge’s new book, but musical references, from the celestial to the earthly, are everywhere. The susurration of cicadas (in ‘Listening to Cicadas’) is – among other things – ‘all the accumulated cases of tinnitus suffered / by fans of AC/DC, Motörhead and Pearl Jam’. In one of numerous poems concerned with maritime themes, Beveridge refers to the ‘dubstep / of the surf’, while in ‘The Walk’, a creek ‘played over stones a tune / from a decrepit piano’.