Diane Fahey builds on an already rich body of poetry about birds with this fresh tribute to their exquisite intelligence, grace and splendour as they exist in the wild, and in our immediate sensory world. Vividly, she evokes the lives and contemporary plight of penguins, flamingos and myriad other birds. Sanctuaries offers a composite portrait of the suffering and the resilience, the giftedness in song and, in evolutionary terms, the self-fashioned beauty of birds.