An Arbitrary Light Bulb by Ian Duhig; What the Earth Seemed to Say by Marie Howe; Collected Poems by Mimi Khalvati; Ceremony for the Nameless by Theresa Lola; Girl by Ruth Padel

An Arbitrary Light Bulb by Ian Duhig (Picador, £12.99)
Among Duhig’s eclectic subjects are his Irish heritage, history, folklore, his home town of Leeds, marginalised figures, social and racial injustices, artists such as Jack B Yeats and Cecilia Vicuña, and poetic influences from Shakespeare to Roddy Lumsden. There is an encyclopedic knowledge and esoteric elusiveness within this book that invites exploration and promises revelation – a mystical hare writing “its own love in white ink on the snow, invisibly … a page awaiting the fall of darkness”. Multifarious and maverick, deeply personal and political, Duhig’s poetic vision alchemises the heart and mind. This is a brilliant collection from a balladeer of our times, a poet who stands for the people, always with a sense of compassion, humility and wry humour.

What the Earth Seemed to Say: New & Selected Poems by Marie Howe (Bloodaxe, £14.99)
This rich and luminous compilation draws from four previous collections, including the hauntingly elegiac What the Living Do (1997), a tribute to Howe’s brother, who died as a result of Aids, and Magdalene (2017), an intense exploration of womanhood. It opens with a bounteous selection of new work. In response to our present-day crises, the speaker asks: “Are you willing to take your place in the forest again? / To become loam and bark, to be a leaf falling from a great height, / to be the worm who eats the leaf, / and the bird who eats the worm?” Howe’s poems carry an emotional depth and transcendent simplicity. There is a simultaneous earthliness and spirituality in her musings on the metaphysical revelations of the divine, the sacred and the eternal. As the book concludes: “Often I’m lonely. / Sometimes a joy pours through me so immense.”