Poetry. TREE LANGUAGE is told in shard- like poems of supreme richness and finely balanced darkness—variously shaped, whittled to a point, almost sharp enough to draw blood. And although this is a book spiked with brambles and skeletal branches, shot through with frost and fossilled with plant-bones, blood is the slick thread that sews together its themes and landscapes: war and personal tragedy, daffodils and poppies, Jerusalem, Scotland, colour and desolation.