Collected Contraptions, comprising work from Peter McCarey's five pamphlet collections, is an exhilarating journey on the U-bahns and runways of language: 'In a matter of hours / they can take you anywhere'. The book opens with water, rain and shadows; the 'singer's mark' from the lost language of the Indus Valley civilisation speaks from a Shakespeare sonnet; we are caught in a sci-fi spaghetti Western; a shady Czech smuggles a golem and a robot into pre-massacre Rwanda. Language shape-shifts, reinvents itself, before going on another road trip where stories are recited backwards and fast forward. Last is 'Tantris', an epic of intricate narrative whose message couldn't be more simple: 'Don't go: don't let the morning / Turn your head with her shivering, thin grace.'
