'All Told' is a poem, a year in the making, that was written to capture the entirety of one period of time and to give away everything about its creator. Like a pair of outstretched hands, it feels its way toward a possible world of certainty, elusive and unseen, that continually suggests its presence in sudden flashes and apparent hints. The seasons come and go, circumstances alter, dreams fade, and, left holding thin air, a moment of shared experience comes: "I feel the whole world change."

Once the happy hunt for meaning has been  abandoned and is followed, inevitably, by desolation, or some less risky accommodation, no new volume of words will set things straight. All self expression grates like musak. But you must relax and enjoy the good things - fresh fruit, offspring, gardening, TV. Poetry can divert somewhat. It plays games with the current lingo and may lead to a qualification. In fact, making yourself seem true or real to those near at hand is everyone's most personal, daily work of art. We need results from our begging, praises, boasting, threats, curses and apologies. Consider poetry. Some will say: It's everything there is for us.

In the way of the different stones in a country wall, rough and smooth, large and small, the various poems in 'Red Haired Rhymes' are laid up together with a common intent. This is to find the line between desire and disillusion, whatever the thing wished for may be, whether love, faith or self expression, or political change. Contains the poem 'For This?' April 1997, written in the week before that decisive General Election, and weighing up England's inclination to renew its identity, through a search for conflict overseas.

Patrick Ingram's first collection of poems, 'Rented Rooms', was written in London during the 1980's but is as much concerned with the countryside or rather ideas about the countryside as with that period of time and the capital city. It includes an extended sequence, The Dream of A Garden, set in the grounds of an imaginary country house. Voices from the past and present explore themes of mortality and continuity, domination and subjection, inside the human relationship with nature.