You need only pick up Tim Robertson’s Reliques/Pomes to know that you’re in the presence of a man with an infectious love of language who also has a bravura histrionic sense of how to communicate it to an audience. Here is a heartfelt poignant elegy for the great John Clarke which captures his reverence for every lumbering attempt at expressiveness in ordinary speech and at the same time his sense of the comic potential of fiddling about with the great poets of the world.