'Naked Clay' is an intimate response to the paintings of Lucian Freud-"the great amplifier of twentieth century figurative art"' as the critic Sebastian Smee has written. The poems are as urgent as the paintings, and taken together they constitute an essay on the ambiguous gifts from a painter of such mortal, material presences. Barry Hill has created a unique space for the senses and the intellect to be prompted, explored and disturbed.