'Charged with vivid imagery and distilled emotion, J V Birch's poems carry us across the globe, swerving between touching intimacies and crackling insight as she skilfully unfolds the emotional complexities of beauty and loss. Venturing into memories of childhood and family, these poems brim with the bittersweet tensions of relationships stretched across distance and time. This collection casts a wide net, yet never loses its acute sensitivity to the wondrous and terrible details of the world.' - Rachael Mead 'J V Birch's poetry can be read anywhere and in any mood. Her focus shifts between the intimacy of familial and romantic relationships, and a journalling of global travel. Her poems are short and modular, full of potency, and with a lively curiosity for extracting the essence from each of her experiences.' - Jules Leigh Koch 'In this collection, J V Birch focuses on the meaning of 'place'. But there are layers to these poems, so that the idea of place is explored alongside the meaning of loss, of human behaviour, of distance from loved ones, of reminiscence, of being an outsider, of nature in the wild and in the city, of catastrophic events and mortality, of relationships and love.' - Mike Hopkins