At its heart a collection of love poems, Because we could not dance at the wedding is about coming out, coming to terms and settling down.Through a series of vividly observed scenes - from single- bedded student flat to registry office waiting room, from a clumsy hotel-room dance to the enforced domestic retreat of lockdown - these poems chronicle a relationship across two decades. Michael McKimm, whose work has been described as 'powerfully tactile' (Penelope Shuttle) and 'delicately momentous' (TLS), has developed a gently radical urban-pastoral, where beating the bounds of his east London neighbourhood may be a negotiation with anxiety and threat, but is always - ultimately - a celebration of falling in love and finding joy in an uncertain world.