"Margaret Royall's 'Where Flora Sings' is a collection to lift the spirits during the long winter nights. Royall's love of all things natural shines through on every page and the reader cannot help but share her delight through such beautifully observed, life-affirming poems. Though she acknowledges that nature can be brutal and life precarious, there is an unwavering optimism and faith in these poems. Age isn't to be feared but to be valued and admired; nostalgia isn't melancholic but comforting; to grieve is to have loved; and death is a precursor to resurrection. At the end of her poem, 'Amaryllis' Royall writes: ' Sweet memories of this colourful profusion/will stay forever locked within my heart', capturing perfectly what this reader will take away from her collection. "

• Nigel Kent

"Margaret Royall's second collection is a highly personal work. She conveys her love of flowers, and their significance to her, both as a woman, and as a poet. She employs a number of diverse narrative tones in this volume, from contemporary and conversational through to voices drawn from received literary traditions. Humour, reflection and spirituality thread through her poems, too. Margaret invokes all five senses as she treats the reader to encounters with blossoms, and wider natural environments. Her poems are informed by her interest in horticulture, geology and music, though she wears this lightly. Her pieces are also underpinned by her passion for the natural world and the welfare of our planet. She uses the motif of seasonal shifts to reflect stages in her subjects' life journeys, and her metaphors are painterly and enrich her poetry.

A wide range of poetic forms appear in the collection. I particularly enjoyed the complexity of her 'Sestina for a Medieval Birthing' and the affecting simplicity of 'September on Iona 1'. The collection is enhanced by a pervasive sense of temporality, as expressed in 'Midnight Stardust'. I am sure that we will be reading more from this sensitive writer, a dedicated and prolific poet."

• Ceinwen E Cariad Haydon