The Professor of Forgetting by Greg Delanty (LSU Press, €18)
“Laureate of those who have gone” is how Colum McCann described Vermont-based Cork poet Greg Delanty. His new collection, The Professor of Forgetting, is another superb book by a poet of undiminished exuberance and power. In this new book Delanty moves from the issue of environment to the vulnerabilities of time itself. The disappearing animals of No More Time (2020) have been transformed into those ultimate creatures: hours and minutes. Time compromised, time lost as love, distance, family and immigration all cluster on the one small lifeboat of poetry. Delanty has always had an astonishing and rare gift, praised from the beginning by Christopher Ricks and Seamus Heaney. This new collection is another timely gift, a masterpiece. Thomas McCarthy
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The Wisdom of Sheep & Other Animals: Observations from a Family Farm by Rosamund Young (Faber, £14.99)
“We talk about people behaving like sheep which assumes that sheep all behave in the same way. That has not been my experience.” Organic farmer and author of the Times Book of the Year, The Secret Life of Cows, Rosamund Young understands animals. So well, in fact, that we will forgive her use of anthropomorphism in this book, which explores the care she devotes to, and joy she draws from, her work at Kite’s Nest Farm. The prose is jaunty and anecdotal in a way that may appeal to young readers, though the narrative is lacking in a coherent shape – the book ends rather than concludes. For readers seeking insight on the grittier elements of sheep husbandry, James Rebanks’s The Shepherd’s Life may have more to offer. Brigid O’Dea
The Island of Mists and Miracles by Victoria Mas, tr. Frank Wynne (Doubleday, £16.99)
From the best-selling French author of The Mad Woman’s Ball, this short novel is inspired by St Catherine Labouré – the Daughter of Charity of St Vincent de Paul who is believed to have received a vision of the Virgin Mary 200 years ago that instructed her to create the miraculous medals still worn by millions today. In contemporary times, Sister Anne is on a mission on an island off Brittany when a new vision is reported that becomes headline news and shatters the island’s peace. This simply-told story sometimes slips into cliched prose, with a cast of characters that it takes time to distinguish from each other, but it is nonetheless graceful in its treatment of the subject. Helen Cullen
