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POETRY: BERNARD O'DONOGHUEreviews The Last Geraldine Officerby Thomas McCarthy, Anvil Press Poetry, 172pp, £10.95

IT IS A long time now since Thomas McCarthy broke spectacularly on the poetry scene in his early 20s with his prize-winning elegiac first volume, The Sorrow Garden. He has covered a lot of impressive ground in the intervening 30 years, in fiction as well as poetry, despite remaining firmly rooted in the local in Cork city where he works in the city library. He is a classic instance – with his London publisher – of the writer’s virtue that Auden compared to a valley cheese: produced locally but prized elsewhere. His multi-tasking is not confined to his own writing; he is a supporter of the admirable Cork-based Munster Literature Centre (this new book is dedicated to some of his colleagues there; several of them featured in disguise in his brilliantly coded last book, Merchant Prince). Perhaps the best word for him is broad-minded; his writing range is wide because his sympathies and amused understanding are so capacious.