Impediments (Abbey Press, 1997)
by Adrian Rice
Impediments, the second sequence of poems by Adrian Rice to appear in print, is as unconventional, allusive and intriguing as its predecessor, Muck Island. Enigmatic yet provocative, the poems in this chapbook range from the intensely personal to the boldly satirical. Together, they confirm Rice's growing reputation as a distinctive new voice in Ulster poetry.
'Adrian Rice has a nice sense of what he is up to as a poet: I like and admire the way his district and his diction are so artfully tongue-in-cheek and hand-in-glove.'
- Seamus Heaney
The Home Fire (Abbey Press, 1998)
by Mark Roper
The Home Fire consists of fourteen recent poems by Mark Roper. The poems explore possibilities of being at home: in language, in nature, in the world. They construct halfway houses, made out of the paradoxical mixture of comfort and threat, security and insecurity, inherent in the title phrase.
'... Unusually, Roper has learnt from both Larkin and Heaney, and if there is hybridization, it has produced a distinctively original growth ... those who care about poetry's survival should keep the cameras trained on his progress.' - Carol Rumens
The Point of Singing (Abbey Press, 1999)
by Edward Denniston
These poems both assert and interrogate some aspects of dissenter patrimony and sensibility ... a note seldom if ever heard in writing coming from the Republic of Ireland. The note is seldom overt but more often remains a ghost presence within or on the margins of contexts of love and domesticity. The sensibility which informs the poems is aware of the aridity of 'a hard, intractrable gound' and is drawn to celebration and tenderness, but remains instinctively watchful and seeks to put these conflicting responses into a true balance. - Michael Coady |
