Catulla et al summons up the sensual and scandalous spirit of the Latin poet Catullus his lyricism, diatribe and bawdy by turns wrenching, cynical and outrageous. But whereas the Roman love chronicler is a young man about town, Tiffany Atkinson's Catulla is a free-thinking female confronting modern mores with both ambivalence and uneasy embarrassment. The Catulla poems in her second book show a shift away from the loosely confessional or straightforwardly narrative poems of her first collection, Kink and Particle, towards a more explicit playfulness with stories. Other poems try to keep one foot in a recognisable "real world" while still bending it out of shape with strange plot twists, elements of folk tale or myth, and philosophical musings. 'Certainly, like many of her generation, she is commendably various in her concerns, adept at recording the experiences of childhood, family, ageing, love and, of course, the ubiquitous detritus of twenty-first century life. But what sets her apart from the crowd is her unstinting and penetrating gaze, a take-no-prisoners scepticism that somehow never loses its quite particular purpose, and a warm accessibility married with a cool intelligence. Whether writing about difficulties in love or liberty, Tiffany Atkinson is smart, sexy and often very, very funny' Kathryn Gray, Poetry International Web 'Atkinson's work is cleverly edgy and intimate, balancing the casual and the complex. The closeness and eroticism of love is explored and the quotidian imbued with layers of possible, plausible folklore. Its particular styles derive their effect from seeming familiar but winding round the reader their nagging difference' Roddy Lumsden, Identity Parade 'Atkinson achieves sophistication without brittleness, and illustrates that much of the most intelligent and accessible poetry of the last five years is being written by young women' W.N. Herbert, Poetry London