I've had this tiny little chapbook on my Kindle for ages; I think I first got it back when I was doing my PhD, and flipping through various nature writing collections. It is as appealingly weird as I remember. Basically, it does what it says on the tin. Tortoises contains six (fairly long) poems about, you guessed it, tortoises. Unless he's just bullshitting, Lawrence had a family of them living in his garden, and he seems thoroughly fascinated by them. He especially seems fascinated with tortoise sex, and let's be honest this is about what you'd expect from him. The female tortoise is very large, the male is very small, and it's all as awkward as you think and yet strangely entertaining, which is probably why he was watching them in the first place.

Not that I'm one to talk. If tortoises were fucking in my garden I'd probably watch them too, though I don't know that I'd go so far as to put the experience into verse.