A Viking king, a sixteenth century accountant, and the Archbishop of Oxmantown collide with an apocryphal evangelist, a Portuguese poet, street-sellers, buskers, auctioneers and lovers in a world at once recognizable and unpredictable.

Peter Sirr's fifth collection broadens the template of his widely admired The Ledger of Fruitful Exchange.

In the urban settings of flatland, burger restaurants, and archaeological excavations, the historical and the contemporary meld as the poems consider the idea, first, of a settlement and, secondly, of a city.

The question, 'Who, ever, is at home in a life?' is weighed with style and force in the re-memberings of this exotic, challenging and rewarding poetry.