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POETRY:Cross-TalkBy Siobhán Campbell Seren, 71pp, £7.99

SINEAD MORRISSEY’S Through the Square Windowis already a Poetry Book Society Choice and short-listed for the TS Eliot Prize: and rightly so. This grown-up, serious volume dares, as writing in these islands rarely does, to range from European history (“a territory so seeming rich /and decorous”) to motherhood, by way of speculations on the nature of Matter, and dark “found” stories, from Arkansas or “our back door”. Though one might expect a Belfast writer to deal with political history (is there any other kind?) and, as a woman, in family narratives, it is a mark of Morrissey’s poetic authority that she gives no sense of going through the usual confessional motions. This collection is authentic, instead, to a confident, inquiring intelligence that makes itself felt on every page.