On Purpose Av Nick Laird

<p>Laird''s debut collection, <i>To a Fault</i> (2005), signalled the arrival of a significant new talent, ''doing more, in its range and ambition,'' wrote Deryn Rees-Jones in the Independent, ''than any first collection I can think of in at least the last ten years.'' <i>On Purpose</i> confirms the promise of that first book and shows the author hitting new and yet more athletic strides. <br><br>Blending tones of assurance and delicacy, of confidence and vulnerability, <i>On Purpose</i> is a collection of poems that takes care and consideration in examining the often brutal arena of human relations, concluding with a mercurial and affecting sequence about a marriage, which takes, as its point of departure, that most influential of military treatise, <i>The Art of War.</i></p>