Contains Mild Peril is the kind of book that turns a slow afternoon into a richly rewarding one.

Adrian Buckner’s first full collection is not a book to be belted through, snatched between one commitment and the next, not a book with sharp elbows or a cutting tongue; but a book to be savoured, enjoyed and admired for its gentleness and humour. Its heroes are provincial old codgers, village cricketers, the invisible people who live behind net curtains, the stalwarts who make up the numbers at adult education classes.

If Contains Mild Peril celebrates the determinedly unfashionable, it certainly doesn’t wallow in nostalgia. Full of surprises and wonderful images (the girls on the bus who are sundered and re-united, the yellow hoop stuck in a playground tree) Buckner is in the best tradition of quiet men — when he talks, everyone stops to listen.

‘A Buckner poem moves, and moves unexpectedly. He does this not to be pyrotechnic, or modish, but because his subject is mankind.’ — U A Fanthorpe

'He's a deft, confident wordsmith with an eye for an engaging image, and he never over-states his case.’ — Catherine Smith, Poetry Library

Adrian Buckner studied English at the University of Swansea and moved to the Midlands in 1984. His two pamphlet collections are The Blameless Life (1997) and One Man Queue (2004). Contains Mild Peril is his first full collection. He edits Poetry Nottingham and lectures in Creative Writing at Derby University.