Front Cover -- About the Author -- Title Page -- Copyright -- Contents -- Acknowledgements -- Foreword by Ali Smith -- Introduction -- A Note on the Text -- POEMS -- from origins and elements (1959) -- Elasticity -- Reading about Rimbaud -- 'It's a mistake to write a poem that seems more certain' -- Emily -- Water -- Carbon -- Reputation -- Storms -- A Fire -- Flood-water -- Sleep -- 'Protected in my little house' -- To Anybody at All -- Singularity -- Four or Ninety or ∞ or what -- Now -- Lezione di Recitazione -- ' "Don't meet," they say to me' -- The Unbreakable-Up -- Litmus -- Cave Drawing of the Water of the Earth and Sea -- Hooray, Hooray, Hoo Ray Ray Ray -- Sprung Sonnet -- Ay, Ay, Ay, Dolores -- from Subjects and Sequences (1960) -- Pomona -- Bowery -- Standing Stones of Stenness -- Then, Oh Then, Oh Then -- Edward Nairn, Poet -- Kulgin the Helicopter -- Alex -- Allison -- But why not try this method -- A Poem for a Morning -- Pavement Artist -- from Short Poems on Blue Paper -- Historical Sense -- The Old Lady of Loth -- Punishment -- One World, One Sun -- Epiphany -- Northerner -- Midwinter -- You Heard What the Minister Said, Pet -- 'The eyebright was for you' -- Bushels -- Mary, Queen of Scots -- Secrets -- from The Hen and the Bees (1960) -- Hen -- Dogs -- Family -- The Scale of Things -- Locklessness -- For Using -- Light -- Responsiveness -- Trust -- Spring 1958 -- Remains that Have Been Tampered With -- Queen of Fact and Story -- Story-telling Queen -- Sea-going King's Queen -- The Queen and All the Children -- A Queen in Prison -- Belief -- Other Gods, Other Ways -- Loki Beside the Standing Stone -- Thor -- Freya -- Baldar -- By the Book -- Sound of Children Sobbing -- Face-kicking -- Uncollected and Unpublished Poems -- One is One -- Studentessa (The Little Tourist in Rome) -- The Window Boxes.

Seeing's Believing and Believing's Seeing -- Horses -- Word Song -- That's Them off on Their Spring Forays -- Drawing in Pen and Ink -- The Sky of Your City -- Why Did They Go? -- The Raven Banner -- Concha Orcadensis -- This Now -- Free for All -- Flame -- from a twenty-seven-page 'Examination into the meaning of fire' -- Il Mago -- Materfamilias -- Me -- In Olden Days -- Winter Solstice -- What is it that's wonderful about the photograph? -- The Boats at Droman -- Redefinition of a Lame Duck -- Orquil Burn -- Soon -- Grove -- SHORT STORIES -- The Incomers -- The Song Gatherer -- Sixteen Frames per Second -- WRITINGS ON FILM -- Time -- On Rossellini -- Portrait of a Lady in a Green Dress -- Independence: Small Budget Production in Rome -- On Throwing a Film Festival -- Close-up of Rose Street -- Two-way Drift -- Colour Poems 1974 -- Film-poem or Poem-film: A few notes about film and poetry from Margaret Tait -- Video Poems for the 90s (working title) -- RESOURCES -- Works by Margaret Tait -- Selected Bibliography -- Selected Filmography -- Archives -- Index of Poem Titles -- Index of Poem First Lines.