Eithne Hand (Salmon Poetry, 2020); pbk: €12,00 Wherever your political inclinations, in the aftermath of the UK’s most recent election, it’s likely we can agree that we have all endured a certain amount of tired, repetitive debate. In poetry, probably, there are parallels in the regularly trundled out arguments polarising page and stage, discussions which Read More
In the poem prefacing Some Integrity, Padraig Regan’s first full collection, ’50 ml of India Ink’, commissioned by Belfast School of Art, shows how integral art is to nature and to language. The collection addresses how forms change, and how lived experiences are transmuted revealing their true value and essence:
Opaque, & black as gravity,
the ink […]
[…] performs its tiny fractal
creep through the paper’s
knitted capillaries[.]
A democratic eye bounces off the page in this collection of poems from Susan Millar DuMars’ twenty five years of published writing. She sees love in the quotidian detail, gives voice to women on the edge, notices that which we would pass by and, moreover, she deals with subjects that are normally hidden and forbidden.
Guide the small boat of my body back to my self. Tell me which path brings me home. (‘Mercy’) Róisín Kelly’s first full collection (her chapbook, Rapture, was published in 2016, by Southword Editions) explores that very potent Irish Roman Catholicism with its personal and political resonances, and weighs it up against the island’s older, Read More
Randomer is Colm Keegan’s second collection of poetry; his first, Don’t Go There was released to critical acclaim in 2012. Shortlisted for the Hennessy New Irish Writer Award four times, he won the All Ireland Poetry Slam in 2010. Perhaps that’s not surprising as from a young age Keegan liked reading out loud. In interviews Read More
Imagine the poet as a sandwich-board man, with his daily routine of spreading the word. Dennis O’Driscoll was such a poet – plain-speaking, astute, wary of ornament – his poetry pronounces ‘every day’ on the board at the front, and ‘death’ at the back, as he walks away. Born in Tipperary, on New Year’s Day Read More
The Parting Glass is a collection of 14 sonnets by Northern Irish poet, Neil Young, long resident in Scotland. True to its title, each sonnet is a farewell to a beloved family member or a friend, a toast to memories – private and public, and a nod to the present that will soon be lost. Read More
