On Purpose

Laird''s debut collection, To a Fault (2005), signalled the arrival of a significant new talent, ''doing more, in its range and ambition,'' wrote Deryn Rees-Jones in the Independent, ''than any first collection I can think of in at least the last ten years.'' On Purpose confirms the promise of that first book and shows the author hitting new and yet more athletic strides.

Blending tones of assurance and delicacy, of confidence and vulnerability, On Purpose is a collection of poems that takes care and consideration in examining the often brutal arena of human relations, concluding with a mercurial and affecting sequence about a marriage, which takes, as its point of departure, that most influential of military treatise, The Art of War.