The Pleasures of Peace gathers recent poems by Paul Rossiter, mostly written on the movein 2018-19, and concerned with such matters as Pythagoras, The Tempest, Westray andPapa Westray, a Neolithic house, biscuits and oatcakes, seabirds in flight, a hot spring inAkita, big seas and snow rollers, jazz in Tokyo, elegiac memory, Kamakura in February,the other side of the world, Isamu Noguchi, a feat of archery at the Battle of Yashima(1185), Issa’s words for rain, the late Cantos of Ezra Pound, the London Blitz, rosebaywillow herb, Tomas Tranströmer, the Plymouth Blitz, the Rame Peninsula in easternCornwall, Richard Carew of Antony, incidents in Brexitland, Barbara Hepworth’s garden,the Isles of Scilly, an approach to Penzance by sea in rain, and the onset of autumn.
