<p>In the title poem, the speaker sits at the window of a small hotel room. The room is a holding zone, a temporary stopping-place between memory and possibility. <i>In the Quaker Hotel</i> is full of questions about the world. Rooted in nature, the poems are fearful for it. They move out through identifiable landscapes (Merseyside, north Wales, Nova Scotia, southern France) to off-kilter, tilted places beyond our immediate reality. We are temporary guests in these places and in our own lives. Who will come after us, how will they see things: 'who will tend the bees / in the communal garden'?</p><p>Helen Tookey experiments with form and theme, as in her earlier books <i>Missel-Child</i> (Carcanet, 2014, shortlisted for the Seamus Heaney First Collection Prize) and <i>City of Departures</i> (Carcanet, 2019, shortlisted for the 2019 Forward Prize for Best Collection).</p>