This sequence takes the challenging subject of breast cancer, and, while regarding it with the appropriate seriousness, also treats it with an inventiveness and wit that asks telling questions about the cultural meanings that breasts have acquired, as in 'My Breasts and I Consider Elizabeth 1' which deploys early modern language to suggest the longevity of the concerns which these poems raise, the 'Sweet mutability' to which bodily existence is subject.

Ian Gregson