Read Ireland Book Reviews
Issue 375 - 28 April 2007
Irish Poetry
Selected Poems of Louis MacNeice
Trade Paperback with Endflaps; 17 Euro / 22 USD / 13 UK; 160 pages
I would have a poet able bodied, fond of talking, a reader of the newspapers, capable of pity and laughter, informed in economics, appreciative of women, involved in personal relationships, actively interested in politics, susceptible to physical impressions.' Louis MacNeice's prescription is designed to look ordinary, rather than esoteric, but very little poetry can claim to meet these specifications, stringent in their very wideness. MacNeice's work matches the world he famously described as 'incorrigibly plural'. Michael Longley, himself a distinguished Ulster poet, has written an introductory essay of meticulous advocacy.
Collected Poems of Francis Harvey
Trade Paperback; 18 Euro / 24 USD / 13 UK; 224 pages [Add To Basket]
FRANCIS HARVEY was born in Enniskillen in 1925 and has published four previous collections of poems, the most recent of which is Making Space: New & Selected Poems (Dedalus, 2001). Among the many prizes his work has won are The Irish Times/Yeats Summer School Prize, The Guardian/WWF Prize, and a Peterloo Prize. The publication of Collected Poems is a major event in the Irish poetry calendar, bringing together work from all of his earlier collections with a large selection of new poems which show him to be as attentive as ever both to philosophical subtleties and to the wonders of the natural world. In the context of Irish poetry, Harvey is, according to Moya Cannon in her Introduction, "a Basho-like figure, guided by an unwavering sense of true north, always moving to the washed light on higher ground." (Also available in hardback, priced at 28 Euro)
The Mirror Tent by Gerard Smyth
Paperback; 11 Euro / 14 USD / 8 UK; 78 pages
Gerard Smyth has been praised for his "painstaking eye for the telling detail" (Philip Casey). This new collection sees him return to the subject of his native Dublin as he also extends his geographical and thematic reach in poems that are typically thoughtful, quiet-spoken and assured. GERARD SMYTH was born in Dublin in 1951. He has been publishing poetry in literary journals in Ireland, Britain and North America since the late 1960s. He is the author of five collections: World Without End (New Writers' Press, 1977); Loss and Gain (Raven Arts Press, 1981); Painting the Pink Roses Black (Dedalus Press, 1986); and Daytime Sleeper (Dedalus, 2002), which also appeared in a Romanian translation in 2003. His latest collection, A New Tenancy, was published in 2004. 'At his best he can set images ringing with life and make them resonant with significance' - Books Ireland. 'Daytime Sleeper is a refreshing and invigorating testament to a true poet at work in the world' - Eugene O'Connell, Cork Literary Review. 'Gerard Smyth has a painstaking eye for the telling detail... in his hands the impact of simplicity is extraordinary'- Philip Casey. ‘He may do for Dublin in verse what Joyce did for it in prose' - Michael Hartnett.
Among These Waters by Mary O’Donoghue
Paperback; 11 Euro / 14 USD / 8 UK; 70 pages [Add To Basket]
Mary O'Donoghue was born in 1975 and grew up in Co. Clare. Her first poetry collection Tulle was published in 2001, and her poems have appeared widely in Irish and international periodicals and anthologies, including The New Irish Poets (Bloodaxe, 2004). She is an assistant professor of English at Babson College, Massachusetts, and she lives in Boston. Among These Winters opens with an epigraph from Rilke on the heartbreak of parting, and stays mindful of this theme... Yet a striking good humor suffuses the collection, and nowhere more so than in poems like "The Stylist" and "Leading the Apes in Hell," where she displays that distinctly Irish gift of setting out a comic proposition and letting it run its antic course. -James Silas Rogers, Editor, New Hibernia Review
A Handful of Light by Livia Viitol, translated from the Estonian by Ilmar Lehtpere
Paperback; 12 Euro / 16 USD / 9 UK; 58 pages
Livia Viitol lives and works in Estonia, where she is a poet, cultural historian and literary critic.
Wide Boy by Phillip Crymble
Paperback; 12 Euro / 16 USD / 9 UK; 38 pages
This poet was born in 1957 and emigrated to Canada with his family in 1978.
Certain Matters by Milner Place
Paperback; 12 Euro / 16 USD / 9 UK; 52 pages [Add To Basket]
Milner Place came to poetry late in life, after years of much travelling, including eleven years as a captain of working sailing vessels and yachts.
Herself in Air by Alan Garvey
Paperback; 10 Euro / 13 USD / 7 UK; 68 pages [Add To Basket]
Alan Garvey was born in Dublin and grew up in Naas.
And something completely different …
Serious Sounds by John Moriarty
Trade Paperback; 8 Euro / 11 USD / 6 UK; 63 pages [Add To Basket]
A wonderful walk through the story of Moriarty's childhood growing up on a small farm in north Kerry, and his lifelong engagement with traditional Catholic sacraments, taking as his point of departure Philip Larkin's poem ‘Church Going' - a richly meditative essay of extraordinary resonance that begins with a visit to the island of Inis Fallen on Loch Leine: ‘People say we live in a time of ritual deprivation. Not so people of my age born into Christian Ireland. From three days' of age I was inducted onto the Christian sacramental road, and that journey I rehearse in this book.' ‘The connection between psychic pain and religious ritual in Catholicism is done beautifully. More than any other, this was very personal and profoundly moving.' - Michael Harding
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