A sneak preview of next Saturday’s Irish Times books pages

There are some delightful poetic treats in store for you this Saturday as John McAuliffe reviews Gerard Smyth's new collection, A Song of Elsewhere; Frank Ormsby's Goat's Milk: New and Selected Poems; and Enda Wyley's Borrowed Space: New and Selected Poems. There's also a new poem, The Birds I Know, from Dermot Healy's posthumous collection, The Travels of Sorrow, while Maureen Kennelly's Word for Word column celebrates the rich tradition of poetry about food.

On the fiction front, hot on the heels of Alan Titley's translation of The Dirty Dust, Eileen Battersby reviews The Key/An Eochair by Máirtín Ó Cadhain, translated by Louis De Paor and Lochlainn Ó Tuairisg.

Ian Thomson reviews The Cut-Up Trilogy: The Restored Texts – The Soft Machine; The Ticket That Exploded; Nova Express by William Burroughs.

Sarah Gilmartin reviews The Hennessy Book of Irish Fiction 2005-2015, edited by Dermot Bolger and Ciarán Carty.

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In non-fiction, Chris Mullin offers some great personal insights in his review of Blair Inc: The Man Behind the Mask, by Francis Beckett, David Hencke and Nick Kochan.

David Fitzpatrick reviews Babette Smith's The Luck of the Irish: How a Shipload of Convicts Survived the Wreck of the Hive to Make a New Life in Australia.

Brian Dillon reviews On Immunity: An Inoculation by Eula Bliss.

Peter Murphy reviews Are the Irish Different? edited by Tom Inglis.

Susan McKay reviews The Scarlet Woman and the Red Hand – Evangelical Apocalyptic Belief in the Northern Ireland Troubles by Joshua T Searle.