Soft Touch

Selected by Carol Ann Duffy for the 2019 Laureate’s Choice Collection

Sharp and observant, Soft Touch uses wry humour to balance the pathos arising from picking holes in life’s day-to-day dramas. Cole often finds poetry in the mundane, twisting fantasy and truth with a memorable resonance.

Sharp-edged and sharp-witted; richly humane and darkly humorous. These deft poems are both crystalline and subtle
– Dermot Bolger