Uses sixty poems by some of our finest poets to look at the idea of the journey, through literature and through life. The author highlights the ways in which the best poets find a balance between rhymed formal verse and modernism's freer styles, using a traditional, formal craft to convey genuinely felt, up-to-the-minute experience.

In an increasingly unstable world, she argues, we need poetry more than ever to help us to see afresh and understand the journeys of our lives.