The main work in this collection is the 'Exits' sequence. Each of its ten poems is a search for an exit from the no-man's land of a metaphorical roundabout which is based on a real roundabout in West London. Until the final poem each route chosen turns out to be a cul de sac. The poems draw on an everywoman's life experiences and reactions to the world. Exit Four is a surreal reflection on dictatorship and war in the twentieth century . Other poems are responses to music, social outcasts, ageing, a journey. The settings are urban and the narrator expresses a longing for natural life. Only four of the poems are included in my new and selected poems, Insisting on Yellow. War is the theme of several poems in the book including the war in Yugoslavia:

Then I see faces grazed by fear,
slippered feet scrambling up a hill,
a bag of seed split and scattered,
birds' wings frantic behind mesh,
an old man coffined in mud. (Pigeons)

There are also several personal poems including 'Willows', a sequence about the way I was mothered and the difficulty I experienced in becoming a mother.