Precarious Lives

`Jean Watkins ... illustrates a particular gift for concrete detail with poems so rich in the senses that they seem to lift off the page ... This collection also includes a number of poems which have a sparkly `stand alone' quality' - The North `Watkins works our imaginations through our senses and, as with the best short poems, the story is rich in what Roland Barthes called blind field, the white area around a photograph, the world around a poem' - London Grip `Watkins' sense of detail is sharp, whether describing nature, an urban scene in Reading or family matters. ... Make no mistake, these are poems crafted as carefully as the artefacts and heirlooms they sometimes describe ... and I am left wanting more' - The Interpreter's House