The Ladder is Simon West's third collection of poetry, and his first in four years. Many earlier preoccupations return-the natural environment, Italian art, the dimensions of place. There is a new focus on worldly and artistic responsibility, and finding that 'certain poise' of 'being in between'. At the collection's heart are the building blocks of language, along with the more literal ones of Rome, where some of these poems were written during a residency at the Whiting studio in 2012.