Engaging with images, the poems in Afterlives reverberate with the ghosts from the pictures, whose roles are still being played out in the divisive echo-chambers of today's insiders and outsiders. Rich with social commentary, delivered with wit, and sometimes a hint of mischief, there is a serious intent at work here: the voice of those who know 'whose tragedy they are in' — 'their own'. And who know also that they: 'will defy anything / that gets in their way'.