Julie Maclean's third full poetry collection takes its title from a line in Elizabeth Bishop's The Bight:

'All the untidy activity continues, awful but cheerful.'

This loose memoir is one of tender elegies and a restless energy, taking delight in the absurdities of family life and romantic love.

Poems move cinematically through inherited histories, shifting landscapes and the mess of fertility and intimate relationships. By the final section, Uncomfortable Truths, the voice grows quieter and more contemplative as the gaze turns towards ageing, making peace and facing the inevitable.