Sebastian Barker was one of our very best poets. His last collection, The Land Of Gold (Enitharmon, £9.99) was published just before he died in January. 

Written when Barker knew he was dying, it is a book about mortality and loss (“Life is a radiant highway rippling through flowers, a patina of gold — over an earthquake territory”).

But it would be hard to find a more beautiful and rapturous celebration of living and loving, the natural world and the human body: “When the sun came over the mountains,/I rose from the sheets and threw open the shutters/On the four corners of the world of your body.”