Myth, folklore and folksong interpenetrate some wonderfully vivid meditations on childhood and children, landscape and history; but most of all Robertson's new book is concerned with the transformations of art, of love and fate.

The book, as the title implies ("swithering" is Scots for "caught between two decisions") hovers in that space where everything is in flux, and where great change - not always for the better - becomes a real possibility.

With its beautiful descriptive precision, and occasionally moving and disarming directness, Swithering is Robin Robertson's most cohesive and powerful poetic statement to date.