Galileo’s wife, a young woman dying of radium poisoning, the first dog in space, a strangely obsessed concert pianist, an early beneficiary of plastic surgery, and a Russian boy whose adventures are sadly limited by the immature powers of the child who has conjured him up are just some of the figures encompassed by Lavinia Greenlaw’s imagination.

The poet’s level gaze as she contemplates the more bizarre aspects of science and of human behaviour lends further distinction to this, her first collection.