'The Momentary Clock' is Peter Hague's fifth book of outstanding poetry. Once again, he takes full control of the whole canopy that his work becomes - each book a soul-searching work of art that reveals another side of this talented indie author. His various books could be described popularly as concept albums in poetry, but there is much more to it than that - they are more like a rigorous test of broad faith or an aerial of extended thought, always tuned into the rich plethora of common simplicity that is caught in the eye and the mind of living. They become relentless pictures of experience and inspiration; there is also an occasional sense of good humour at work.

As usual, there is no leaning toward any political association or religious following, yet thoughts on all these important human tendencies continue to be observed and flow through his work. Sometimes it is a genuine search for truth and understanding, and other times a careful examination of the inherent wrongs that dogmatic or idealistic thinking can lead the human condition to embrace. Many of his important observations are illustrated through personal narratives.

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To some extent Louder Prayers resembles an earlier anthology of my work entitled 'Gain of Function', with its reliance on new poetry, some of it first published on the internet. Yet it also has a strong relationship to my previous volume called 'Summer With The Gods' - where this new book asks for 'Louder Prayers' combined with a further search around the edges - those still unexplored areas not quite touched on before. It is certainly a further development of my writing style, and although its physical presentation is designed to give the feel of a prayer book, it is an honest proposition and not in any way disrespectful, sarcastic or facetious.

Another strength of these poems is a legitimate need to touch on a number of social issues - coming at them in abstract ways. Since I do not favour any political or social leaning, there is no attempt to sway the reader. Yet I feel my observations, political or religious, need at least to be aired - or what's the point? In no way is my work an exercise in demonstrating pc notions or pseudo-religious guidance, but words must be allowed to identify potential problems and quasi current situations in a critical or merely heuristic sense.

This short collection of poems spans more than a decade - the period between 1989 and 2003. Their mood is something like a half-way house between my work in previous and post decades and is a sort of 'bridging period'. Therefore it feels right that this collection is released into the public arena alongside my very latest work: 'Gain of Function' - these two books will be a vanguard for my lifelong commitment to poetry and there is much more to follow, from both my past and current work. You may find an underlying sense of bitterness about some of the poems in 'Hope in the Heart of Hatred', perhaps bordering on cynicism - but it is a tooled bitterness, sharpened to provide explanation, reason and defiance - there are also many moments of humour here too and it is essentially a book about hope.

This book is a great deal more than the sum of one hundred and two poems. It represents a shift in creative potential which is exactly described by its title: 'Gain of Function', which you may well recognise as a phrase relating to science. However, within the sphere of this book, Gain of Function mostly represents a collision between past and future in which my long-developed ways of working have been hit by enormous positive change and new possibilities - all driven by the advent of social media and the seismic changes in the world of publishing.

The very recent work presented in this book is unique amongst my output, because for the first time I was faced with the possibility that whichever poem I was working on, it could be immediately presented to the public, and indeed to the world via social media. This new reality created a completely different working atmosphere. The sudden, tense focus of instantaneous publishing added a whole new factor of concentration, necessary confidence and embedded topicality - specifically the poems dealing with the recent virus and some aspects of politics and the media.

This new book of collected poems has grown in power and complexity over the last few years, becoming what might be called a bonded fusion of defined intent - a sort of new magic that began to stray across its own borders. It grew into the natural spaces between the individual poems to create something approaching a loosely epic story of pseudo-mythology, semi-autobiography and a broad gathering of observation. Peter Hague certainly manages to inject into his work a constant newness of unfailing excitement and you will be hard pressed to find a work of poetry written in current times that is more inventive, creative or searching. 'Summer With The Gods' is a poet displaying a landmark development of his talent - one that will define a period of re-invention which began to take place around 2016. His life experience over the previous decades had provided him with a much greater understanding of who he was, and what his place in the world might be and it gathered a new energy to his work that had a lot of fuel in the tank. 'Summer With The Gods' is just a part of this gathering of words, yet stands alone as an entertainment, as much as anything - a poet beginning to stretch his legs and move forward. Other poems from this period and developed from it, will emerge in due course.