Signifying what, exactly? It could imply the absence of a right, or claim, or rank; yet nothing in these poems bears that out. Possibly it indicates a playful reluctance to impose one descriptive label on a wide-ranging collection that includes intricate sonnet sequences, weirdly grand and precise nature poems and homages to places, friends, poets and other artists — Hill is an unexpected Jimi Hendrix fan. But are there clues to his intention in the poem called Without Title?

Its themes appear to be “mourning”, “unfruition”, “misconception”. Elsewhere he longs to be “ageless” and not “ridden by jealousy of all self-healed / in sexual love”. Has he missed out on some things and wished he were a child again? Like The Jumping Boy, “winning / a momentous and just war / with gravity” in a splendidly exuberant poem? But then Without Title itself jumps from this rueful mood, developed in arcane poems to which one can only give baffled admiration, to extraordinary jokes muffled behind ornate screens of language: see From the Annals, about the film The Spy in Black.

The centrepiece is a set of Pindaric odes about history, poetry, politics and love, each 23 lines long and preceded by an epigraph from the diaries of the poet Cesare Pavese. It’s Hill at his most complex and unapproachable; nothing could be less like the lucid poetic narratives of the tragic Italian. By contrast, his translation of The Storm by Eugenio Montale is heart-stopping in its sheer power and accuracy. Is it wrong to wonder why more of Hill’s verse shouldn’t have this immediate, exciting appeal?

At folk-and-poetry gigs in the 1960s, Pete Morgan would read love ballads and protest pieces that fitted the mood and also involved a formal sophistication and sinister wit that left most pop contemporaries standing. Three books followed, and Morgan seemed in full flood; but A Winter Visitor (1983) proved the last until his return with August Light (Arc £8.95). That is partly explained by the university residencies that nowadays swamp the time they once provided for writers to extend their own work. Then came other projects (a forthcoming biography); and a spell in hospital. That at least resulted in poems about some haunting details of the experience: a prison-like cigarette trade, haunting bedside photos, ominous cleaners.

Morgan seems to have relished, “a freedom not to have to write, / to keep the poems in [my] head.” After 23 years a confident lyricism still rules, without the overdrive of some earlier work. He still attempts challenging forms and word-games. Who else would contrive a poem of 10, 10-line stanzas, each line a brutally regular pentameter, about his father’s abandoning the family home 10 days after cutting up a pig into 10 joints? Morgan continues to spot new and troubling things going fishing, walking a seashore, unearthing bits of china buried in shallow soil. After his long abstinence he has re-emerged with arguably his best book.

Those who know Jenny Joseph only for her famous “Warning” that she will wear purple and behave outrageously in old age should extend their acquaintance by sampling Extreme of Things (Bloodaxe £8.95). Her reselection of work from her Selected Poems (1992) — poems such as Trompe l’oeil, For CJ (“Old man / Do not fear to be / A dirty old man”) and extracts from her Persephone poem — are successes that readers will recognise. Here they “lead forward”, she tells us, towards 19 new poems.

Several resemble nicely offbeat pieces she has written for children. Others treat time, ageing and nature in drastically Hardyesque fashion. She is best when her discursive, rambling method strikes something eccentrically sharp and moving; not often in complete poems, though the sustained Lullaby here is a fine exception.

All available at Sunday Times Books First prices on 0870 165 8585

Explore Books

• Book Extracts

• Book Reviews

• Books Group

• Audio Books

Times Recommends

• 10 things you should avoid in hospital (unless there really is no option)
• Exclusive: Philip Pullman's essential reading list
• The White War by Mark Thompson