Notes & Acknowledgements Grateful acknowledgement is made to smith|doorstop Books for permission to republish poems from This Lake Used to be Frozen: Lamps (2011), Ah’ve Soiled Ma Breeks! (2012), and Jazz Peas (2014). Some of the poems in Dad, the Donkey’s on Fire (Carcanet, 1994) were first published in A Chin? (Wide Skirt Press, 1991) and More Poems Please, Waiter, and Quickly! (Sow’s Ear, 1988). ‘The Inevitability of Snow’ was written for a performance with the composer Luke Carver Goss and premiered at The King’s Place in London in December 2010. ‘Not a Real Bear but a Bear Nevertheless’ was commissioned by The Reader magazine to mark the four hundredth anniversary of the first performance of A Winter’s Tale. ‘Dream of a Tree in a Spanish Graveyard’ was commissioned by Adrian McNally and recorded with vocals by Becky Unthank. ‘A Black Dog in Four Legs’ was part of the Golden Fables choir project in Lincolnshire. ‘Grisp the Wheel at Ten Past Two’, ‘There’s Always a Man in a Cardigan’, and ‘What Happened to Freddie Galloway?’ also appeared in The Richard Matthewman Stories (Pomona Books, 2009). ‘Cat Hills’ was written for a collaboration with artist Iain Nicholls. ‘Rhapsody on Boat Names’ was set to music by Ian Stephens. A number of the poems included here were set to music by Luke Carver Goss or formed part of exhibitions with photographer Ian Beesley. Notes & Acknowledgements 241