Voice Mail is Duncan Forbes' first poetry selection since Taking Liberties appeared in 1993. A sparkling and varied collection, Voice Mail displays the growing range and depth of the poet's talents and marks a number of new departures. Accomplished and observant, witty and touching, often in the same poem, Forbes' work moves from serious elegy (Father) to comic turns (Downing Street Cat). The poems' moods, personnel and forms are as varied as the locations, which shift from the banks of the Severn to California via Greece, Northumberland, Niagara and Melbourne Zoo.