Half of Matthew Welton’s new book is occupied by Squid Squad: a novel, his first excursion into that genre, albeit in verse, or squared-off prose in sequence, each section in four mainly four-line paragraphs with short sentences, all in the present tense. In fact, there’s no past tense in sight: the novel exists in an inviolable now. A lot of characters are in play since this is a novel of social surfaces, of picnics and bubble gum and chalk, of weather and protracted metaphors and smells. Stringed instruments. A guitar. Citrus, suppertime. Patches and wrens. The second portion of the book follows like a series of aftertremors from the earthquake (6.9 on the Richter Scale) of the first. Even more is happening than in the novel, more forms, more games, more almost-themes: laughter, evasion, a lot of colours. A clock sonnet, a framed semi-colon; an alphabet of animal expletives...