Flowering Limbs was one of the most eagerly-awaited debut collections of recent years. Stephen Knight had been publishing poems for over a decade in magazines and anthologies, including Faber's prestigious Poetry Introduction 6 in 1985. He received a Gregory Award in 1987, and won the National Poetry Competition in 1992. His book was one of very few first collections to be made a Poetry Book Society Choice. It was also shortlisted for the Mail on Sunday/John Llewellyn Rhys Prize and the T.S. Eliot Prize. His dark, unsettling poems are vividly descriptive, and dazzling in their technical virtuosity. His is a distinctive, youthful voice, 'edgily poised' (PN Review), always looking at things strangely, revealing surreal truths in external and internal worlds. Nothing is quite what it seems in these bristling poems as Knight switches his gaze from the egocentric habits of adolescence to a broader view of a contemporary no man's land.