Liam Bates poetry is cynical and louche, his pamphlet Working Animals explores how fauna, typically pests: spiders, wasps, gnats and maggots are all present, intersect unhelpfully with a world we believe to be our own but is not our own. Liam Bates is a fresh and frequently delightful poet of the anthropocene, whose words crawl under your skin and, when you’re least expecting, bite.