A barrel of dried leaves

"A barrel not of laughs but of contortions, confusions and the occasional dry chortle - and of metre adorned with irregular, sometimes internal rhymes, assonances, alliterations, awkwardnesses and other such trickery unfashionable to the current academic ear, and not a murmur of the poet's inner angst, failed loves or fortitude." This second collection Cameron's poetry contains a wide variety of subjects, not all of which are commonly associated with poetry: a weak man is interviewed by angelsand devils, an Afghan mystic tell us why he became on e, a riposte to Scott's "Breathes there a man with soul so dead", taking the side of the man with a dead soul, the English language, a lesson on Italian viticulture, and another on Italian anatomy amongst others.