About loss and leaving. That's what I'd answer if you asked me what this book of poems is about. And so much more: questions asked of God, memory as landscape, sex, language. Biblical allusions are mined. These are metaphysical, intellectual poems and yet they are tangible, sensory-filled, awash in dailiness.

Evidently not resting on her laurels, Anne Compton's Asking Questions Indoors and Out is a brilliant collection that experiments with the shape of the poem on the page yet still delivers rich, rewarding poems that fill the senses. No stone unturned, no thought overlooked. Metaphor, line, diction, nothing is out of place. And how the line is used! This is, after all, a lingering, thoughtful journey off the Island, as it were, and the long-lined poems seem to reflect that. Ponderous without being dull or dragging the reader down. This is a collection that notices much and delivers more.

Just take a look at these lines from "The Waiting Well"

"Belief's the absence of rope - / call it commonsense - but don't call for it halfway down. It'll be on a level you're not."

Or this one from "Poetry and Belief"

"Like poems, we're refugees from another century."

Sometimes epigrammatic, consistently intellectually rigorous (though without being pedantic), this book is by far my favourite of Compton's Island trilogy. The first two collections (Opening the Island and Processional) each won the Atlantic Poetry Prize and the latter garnered a Governor General's Award. And I loved them both, but I think this one may be even better.

The landscape of time and memory, relationships and loss, materialize as if conjured down to the paper before you. But it doesn't look like any country you've been to before, for all its familiarity of feeling. And that contradiction is fascinating. Add to that Compton's skill with language and metaphor and you have a book of poems worth reading and rereading.