The toll

An escaped lion roams the streets of Essex; a lonely pensioner holds a tower block fete; and a young woman dreams of leaving home.

Travel the unfashionable A-roads and commuter lines of England -'where industry meets marsh'- with poet Luke Wright.

In his stunning new collection, discover a country riven by inequality and corruption but sustained by a surreal, gallow's humour.

The Toll combines the elegaic with the anarchic, placing uproarious satire cheek-by-jowl with wild experiments in form and touching poems of parenthood.

In this mature follow-up to his best-selling debut, Mondeo Man, Wright captures the strain of austerity Britain, speaking truth to power and registering the toll it takes on us all.