All of us have images, memories, anxieties, and general topics of discussion, which we would just as soon not hear about in any form or fashion. When it comes to those things, whatever they might be, some of us want to avoid the temptation to even glance at them for the rest of our lives. Most of us are simply waiting for someone to make us deal with uncomfortable, troubling things. That’s because most of unconsciously want to.

For someone who doesn’t want to be identified as a poet, Ian McLeod certainly seems to be at home using poetry to express his varied powers of observation. In the introduction to his collection Bilge Pump of a Turgid Mind, McLeod seems uncomfortable to be compared to poets.