Following on from their decorated debut, which was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection 2022 and won the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry 2023, Padraig Regan’s The Matter deepens the ekphrastic concerns of their previous work, directing their gaze towards naturally occurring objects. Divided into three parts of lyrical abundance – Animal, Mineral and Vegetable – the parts are linked by their attempts to imaginatively encounter the non-human (and at times, the inorganic) in ways that pay attention to the different formal or material possibilities of embodiment, and offer new foils for this remarkable poet’s intense reflections on mortality and desire.