Glyn Maxwell's collection moves from the South Pole, and from the Amazon to the Somme, to reflect on love, fatherhood and the passing of time. Running through the book, and expressed with the stylistic bravura which has caused his work to be compared with Auden's, is a deep concern for England, past and present. This theme culminates in a series of verse letters to the poet Edward Thomas, killed in the First World War. The Breakage marks a significant step in a wholly distinctive and unpredicable career.In 1997, Glyn Maxwell received the E. M. Forster Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.