This is a first collection with a strong atmosphere and a distinctive voice. "Mrs. Carmichael" brings together poems written over the past twenty years. A house collapsing in the night, the wives of the Buddha and Mahatma Gandhi, social misfits of several kinds, William Cowper's pet hares - Ruth Silcock's subjects are often unusual. She is drawn to the neglected, peculiar or unnoticed, and brings the situations, people and places in her poems to life with humour, adroit observation and great dexterity in unfamiliar verse patterns.