Boy Thing, John Wedgewood Clarke (47pp, £7.20, Arc)

When he was small, in the 1970s, John Wedgwood Clarke lived with his parents in St Ives. His family, devout Methodists, ran a shop. This is where Clarke's latest collection of poems, Boy Thing, begins. It explores the experiences and feelings of a boy trying to make sense of the world around him while dealing with the break-up of his parents' marriage and the subsequent absence of his father. It ends in a time more close to the present, in which the poet himself is a father.

Clarke is a master of capturing the vividness of childhood. For example, when he counts money for his father, he doesn't just add it up. He pays attention to its physicality..