Two Voices by D. M. Thomas is at least two collections in one. The confusion is made the worse by the intrusive cover-photographs, clichés of the 1930's avant garde, which would be plain ugly in any period.

The long science-fiction poems in the early part of the book have a sort of ghost-written effect, but the interest comes and goes. Things improve with a number of shorter poems like The Head-Rape, a horror poem, but at least a convincing one, still in the science-fiction genre, and Wolfbane, which ends in a masterly fashion, with the mind of the witchgirl "under him / turned away / loping / into snowy / darkness".

But it is the Requiem for Aberfan that makes this collection memorable. (pp. 113-14)

D. M. Thomas is, on the whole, scrupulous in allowing us to draw our own dark questions from the way in which he describes the disaster...