How to Make a Woman Out of Water, the title poem of Charles Bennett's new collection, his first since the highly-acclaimed Wintergreen, is full of magic and supple music. Beguilingly simple and approachable, these poems speak with the fluid voice of water. Vivid explorations of water's depth, linked to the dark release of deep sleep, culminate in the collection's central sequence: as one of a pair of lovers falls asleep on a beach, the other muses on the seascape, on lives that flourish on the littoral, and the nature of love itself. The poems in this collection are charged with power and grace, yet lightened by Bennett's wry sense of humour. Lithe and strongly flowing, How to Make a Woman Out of Water gives a pure pulse of clarity and drive, that runs through the whole collection.