"Quietly persuasive and formally adept, the poems in Kathryn Simmonds' first collection engage with both the quotidian and the transcendental. Often in urban or suburban settings, her protagonists struggle with mundane tasks such as cooking or commuting or office work - all the obstacles of modernity - and then, by some shift of attention, or by some keen narrowing of focus, they chance upon the surreal or the spiritual. This is a poetry of subtle contexts and allusions, as much concerned with the vulnerability of the body as for the fate of the soul and the idea of 'keeping faith' in God and life."--Jacket.