Patrick Deeley’s seventh collection of poems displays his deep-rooted concern for and engagement with the world around him - expressed, as ever, in muscular, musical, impassioned and persuasive verse. In The End of the World, however, the tone is more troubled, more urgent. Here, multiple visions of the uselessness / even of beauty in face of greed or misfortune add up to a quiet but powerful appeal to something in our too-often distracted better selves. Deeley reflects on today’s uncertain times, the potential for calamity where barbarity shadows the loveliness always . His evocations of wet meadow, seashore, city street, desert and moorland move with wonder through the living moment, sing the desire to make life last.