Christopher Reid's new collection is a quartet of works for voice, opening with the brisk and brightly coloured monologue of Professor Winterthorn - recently widowed, soon to be retired, who decides on impulse to attend a conference (on'Nonsense and the Pursuit of Futility as strategies...') in California. He is a mordant observer, alert to the anomie of modern displacement - taxis, lifts, airports, lounges, hotel rooms - whose thin air seems at one with the loose change of widowhood, the having nowhere really to go. But adventure lies ahead, and sunshine, and Winterthorn is debonair if undeceived about the deceptions of grief. His strange ride ends on a note of recovery, with the world suddenly in focus again and brimming before him.

Christopher Reid was born in Hong Kong in 1949. He has worked in publishing - notably as poetry editor at Faber and Faber - and in university education. His edition of Letters of Ted Hughes appeared in 2007. His collection A Scattering (2009) won the Costa Book of the Year, and his poem The Song of Lunch was made into a BBC film starring Alan Rickman and Emma Thompson. Faber published Christopher Reid's Selected Poems in 2011.