Harbour Lights

WINNER OF THE IRISH TIMES POETRY NOW AWARD 2006‘wonderful flexibility and tonal command, drawing on a range of literary cultures in its commentary on the present and its imagination of the future’.— Judges’ citationWhen one of the finest contemporary poets produces a new collection containing some of his finest work our response is one of exhilaration and gratitude. The long, wide-ranging poems here (‘Resistance Days’, ‘Calypso’, ‘Harbour Lights’ itself) are interspersed with penetrating glances and a series of dazzling translations which enhance and extend their traditions; his version of ‘The Seaside Cemetery’ is a masterpiece. Together they form a book of rare organic unity and distinction. The author’s resolution to study ‘clouds and their formation’ and his concentration on ‘the real thing’ affirm aesthetic values in a violent time. Remembering ‘lives in a former life’ and celebrating ‘the redemptive power of women’, his work is unique in its verve and fluency. Harbour Lights is an act of faith, and a triumph.