Game of Bear

Peter Bennet's previous collection, "The Glass Swarm", was widely praised for its formal skill, wit, and imaginative reach. "The Game of Bear" includes a powerful sequence in which vertiginous time-shifts and colliding settings in Northumberland and Aquitaine enhance the drama of a story of sorcery, murder, and demonic retribution derived from a hitherto uncollected Border Ballad. In the words of Sir Andrew Motion, these poems establish the criteria by which they must be judged.