POETRY: These three first collections of poetry make frail vessels indeed on the rough tides of the book trade. In spite of what flaws one may find in any poet's early work, we must wish these three good poets calm seas and prosperous voyage.
John O'Donnell is already finding readers for his work, having won Listowel and Tribune/Hennessy awards. He has taken great care in crafting these short poems; images and details carefully selected and arranged; cadences shadowing the iambic base-rhythms; rhyme-schemes deployed . . . well, carefully. A little more "hurting of the music" (Tess Gallagher's phrase) might give them more energy.
At the centre of the collection are six sonnets playing variations on a well-worn theme, "New Testimonies". Their satiric intentions are both forwarded and marred by O'Donnell's syncopated, enjambed lines and random rhyming. So when we get to 'The Cross Speaks', its theme and stance echoing G.K. Chesterton, the effects seem too contrived.
'Volpi' is yet another memoir about an eccentric teacher, here handled wittily enough; and 'Five Iona Avenue', an elegy for a family afflicted by Thatcherite economics, manages to avoid Angela's-Ashes Disease (A-A D) by astute imaging and understatement: "They left. For jobs. Work. The town cut back; The sugar factory's empty nuclear gloom."
Perhaps Larkin's shadow hovers over poems like these; but there's also evidence of growing self-assurance. As is to be expected of a first book, most poems are on obligatory subjects; there is reason to hope, however, that soon his subjects will be finding him.
Liz McSkeane has divided her poems into three parts, although the rationale for this isn't too clear, as the poems spread themselves over diverse experiences, places, and forms. There is no mistaking the Liz McSkeane treatment, however. Everything is carried along on an exuberant, rushing deluge of language, cascading down the page to end with a splash, or - more than once - a trickle.
At times she makes a formal gesture, like rhyme (there's even a villanelle of sorts - "Snap!" - which does anything but). Nevertheless, her own original technique is the headlong gossipy voice of late 20th-century public relations. To illustrate this would require more space than this reviewer can afford. You'll have to buy the book, preferably at a live reading by McSkeane, since these poems are clearly intended for oral delivery, with introductions to help us with obscurity in a few cases.
Patrick Moran's characteristic work evokes the places and people of his native Tipperary, where he works as a teacher. Appropriately, they are reticent, spare accounts and reflections, written in an unpretentious, considered manner. Beneath this surface the sympathetic reader will encounter anger at the laying waste of the countryside ('Bog Lane'), rueful self-mockery ('After the Crash', 'Rough Drafts'), and profound sorrow over the inexorable decline of rural communities. We could wish for more focused imagery, more precise description, but there's no denying this poet's steady, honest tone.
James J. McAuley is a poet and critic
Some other Country. By John O'Donnell. Bradshaw Books, 47pp. €9 (pb)
Snow at the Opera House. By Liz McSkeane. New Island Books, 64pp. €9.99 (pb)
The Stubble Fields. By Patrick Moran. The Dedalus Press, 60pp.€8.80 (pb), €15(hb).
James J. McAuley