Simon Jenner’s third collection establishes him as an emerging major voice. Two For Joy locates itself specifically in the Greenwich and Brighton of psycho-geographers’ nightmares (he knows a few) into the jokily devastating that’s come to be expected of him. An even tauter political engagement goes with a countervaling seasonal adjustment not prominent before. At the heart of this collection lie two kinds of elegy: monologues – especially the Swinburne sequence dedicated to Peter Porter – and other assumptions. Then three elegaic sections: one on a living man, one on a dead, and another as requiescats for the real obituaries of friends Jenner has written of for the Guardian. The language is more crystalline yet resonant; this collection ranges over a wider period (2005-13), sharpens perspectives on new achievements and almost casually evinces what a multi-valent, exasperating poet he is. Again emblems of the 1960s counterculture of his childhood (so he was both there, and remembers it almost sober) haunt the absolutes confronting us today. Yet again Jenner contrives some escape; this collection also commemorates those who haven’t. Here Jenner’s brilliance inherits its own bitter chorus of farewells.