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POETRY:DivinerBy Eugen O'Connell, Three Spires Press, 64pp €10
Forest MusicBy Susan Connolly, Shearsman Books, 106pp, £8.95
Lovely LegsBy Jean O'Brien, Salmon Poetry, 80pp, €12

EUGENE O’CONNELL’S Divineris a book of echoes, anecdotes and dedications. Many of the poems are written “for”, “after”, or “in memory” of others. Their diction is both simple and colloquial, “the best day of the year was when / Tim Carroll came to kill the pig” ( Pieta), and their subject matter is at the same time local and mythic: “After she draws the pension on Friday / I drive my mother to the graveyard”. ( Seeing the Light) There is often a straight-faced, home-grown wisdom about his lyrics, but when O’Connell writes of myth he can also be contemporaneously candid and wry. In Ostpolitik after the 9th C. IrishDeirdre has it out with Naoise, “Miffed at the lame excuse, she caught him / by the ears and lifted him off the ground”.