The Lantern Cage

The poems that Kelly Grovier’s third collection, The Lantern Cage, brings together are prompted by scenes that occur in life’s everyday spaces—city streets and secondhand shops, museum galleries and trains. The title conjures contrasting images of illumination and shadow, warmth and confinement, the burning soul and the material body. These are poems that seek to shine a warm light on the mysteries that underlie our existence. This is a world of “undeciphered sands,” “lost cathedrals,” “buried books,” and “bone machines”—a land where substance and shadow blur. It is a collection that is by turns lyrical and philosophical, romantic and playful.