Kate Lumley's restless mind ranges freely over a wide domain: from the intimate to the public and political; from the bones of a spine to the bones of a house; from wind turbines to Antarctic krill.  But wherever we roam in her debut collection, The Multiple Effects of Entropy, three things stand out—the lack of ostentation, the keen intelligence and the scrupulous, quiet attention to getting each poem exactly right.

Kate's poems are modest in the very best sense of the word. They display the diffidence that characterises a commitment to truth, wherever it may be found—a refusal to be blinded by presumptions and preconceptions, a determination to be receptive to what can be learned, and to the changes that can be wrought, when we open our eyes to the other. The honesty and integrity of this work is so striking that it is hard to avoid the impression that the poems are making Kate Lumley as much as Kate Lumley is making the poems. The result, as John Foulcher writes, is a "debut collection of exceptional quality."