This is a trilogy of republished books by 2023 T. S. Eliot Prize-shortlisted poet Fran Lock, containing Muses and Bruises, Ruses and Fuses, and Raptures and Captures. With its new Introduction and refreshed introductions to all the books, it is an important retrospective collection by one of our most original poets, a rich, eloquent, dense and raging book that is vulnerable, fierce and wise.

Muses & Bruises discovers the classical goddesses of art and knowledge disguised as Travellers in contemporary Britain. It brilliantly juxtaposes the lives of the nine Muses of Greek mythology, with a vivid, grotesque imagining of a grimy, glittery place called Rag Town, and the working-class girls who inhabit it. The poems revel in richness and strangeness, showing the marginal places and unlikely ways where young working-class women find beauty and meaning.

Ruses & Fuses recovers the English Dissenting tradition and connects their struggles with our own – Nedd Ludd, John Lilburne, the Diggers, the Pendle Witches, Fergus O'Connor, the Cable Street marchers, the Cambridge spies, the Diggers, the Dale Farm Travellers and William Morris. She writes of witches, working-class suffragettes, and the unsung, unlovable labours of working-class women. Her poetry conflates historical detail and present crisis to highlight both the continuation of violence against women, and the continuum of solidarity and sisterhood that exists despite this abuse.

Raptures & Captures is an extraordinary and original collection, following on from Muses and Bruises and Ruses and Fuses. It is inspired by Catholic-Communist liberation theology and a fascination with the continuing relevance of the lives of the saints to a radical, liberating politics for us, here and now.

/ Spectres // Defectors /// No Respecters, a Poetry Omnibus by Fran Lock, IBN 9781912710768, £12, available here.