Perseverance Valley is a book that transcends the human, the nonhuman and other worlds. Amongst the mountains, basalt icons and the 'mystery-of-purple-lights-in-the-sky', Opportunity's searching on the red planet becomes an act suffused with spirituality. Like Opportunity, Cave's poetics roam in curious, unexpected and illuminating directions; alighting on King Lear, Bethlehem, string theory and Vermeer. These are poems that strikingly reach out: 'Please won't you be my neighbour? // Opportunity croons / across the ionosphere'. - Izzy Galleymore Given only a modicum of imagination and lack of object permanence we might have found something poignant in the last messages from the Mars Rovers. But what Cave achieves in Perseverence Valley, among other things, is converting the story of Spirit and Opportunity into a Greek tragedy, a Gospel, an opera, a fractured epic poem, an origin story and an eternal elegy. Far from 'the B side of the planet', it's urgent, timelessly inventive and genuinely moving. - Luke Kennard.