MACDARA WOODS was always his own man: he ploughed an individual and distinctive furrow. His characteristic independence cost him recognition from some critics; that, and his friendship with many of the people who frequented McDaids in the autumn of its heyday in the Sixties. Oddly enough, his discriminating sense of style earned him a reputation for eclecticism in some critical quarters; that, and a disapproving attitude that he was part of a clique which often seemed to flaunt its rejection of bourgeois' values, in an uninhibited display of bohemianism.
So, despite early demonstrations of his talent for verse during that wonderful and dreadful decade, Woods did not receive the recognition which his work merited his first two publications - Decimal D. Sec Drinks in a Bar in Marrakesh (1970), and Early Morning Matins (1973), were ignored or damned with faint and condescending praise. The first, a long sequence poem set in Morocco, almost disappeared without trace, like a mirage. As for the second publication, the author states in his foreword that "it was savaged by the then T.C.D I.T. and Queen's. University Belfast nexus. Fighting words.
The foreword, in fact, is a kind of defiant manifesto, rather than an apologia, in which the author outlines the considerable difficulties he encountered in getting published in the late Seventies and early Eighties.
Despite a literary profile as a co editor of the magazine Cyphers during that time, Woods did not reach a wider audience until the establishment of Dedalus Press in the later Eighties and their publication of three of his collections - Stopping the Lights in Ranelagh (1987), The Hanged Man Was Not Surrendering (1989), and Notes From the Countries of Blood Red Flowers (1994).
These volumes, which are generously represented in this Selected Poems, revealed a poet whose vision had crystallised and matured with a sureness of style form and tone of voice. Now there was a fluidity and, confidence in the writing; public issues were mediated through a more personal and even domestic prism of tight. Kavanagh's valuable legacy - that poets should trust their own instincts, learn and, re-learn their trade, seek the universal in the personal and particular - had been well learnt.
There are many fine poems in this account of an artistic and spiritual odyssey that takes in the Dublin scene, London, Paris, North Africa and, latterly, Italy. Friends are celebrated, ghosts rehabilitated, demons exorcised, journeys and pilgrimages commemorated. Of particular notability are verses set in Panicale, Tuscany Letter from Colle Calzolaro"; "Death in Venice"; "The Country of Blood Red Flowers"; "Miz Moon"; "Sunflowers", and "Blues Note for John Jordan".
A quote from the last named verse, in memory of a singular spirit:
But none of this is news to you old hand at hospitals recidivist of love high wire traveller at night
European tight rope walker attender at infirmaries astonisher and puzzlement old mentor veterano BETEPAH
The good ship Woods has come safely into harbour at last, with a rich cargo.
SELF ASSURANCE, a sense of certainty and optimism often marks the precocious young artist - witness the righteousness and even arrogance of Joyce in The Portrait. In the case of poets, it can be accompanied by feelings of separateness, otherness, which may be mediated as lines on isolation, loneliness, melancholy or ennui (a strange one, that last). These are often the subject matter for early lyrics and, in the hands of a real talent, can yield real fruit.
Pat Boran is a case in point. His first collection, The Unwound Clock, was strikingly self assured, as the Poetry Review critic noted. Familiar Things, his second full volume, showed that he, had achieved, by his late twenties, a considerable mastery of line, a fluidity which gave the appearance "off easy and prolific creativity - where the local and cosmic were held in harmony.
The Shape of Water seems to mark a turning point in his progress. Yes, the same capacity for lucid and clear lyric form is still evident; but his journey has taken him into less certain and less calm waters. There are here verses which are confessional, revelatory and exploring loss as well as gain is acknowledged; there is a search for veracity and fixed signposts, rather as, though, he were a mariner sailing in previously uncharted seas.
Perhaps this marks a recognition that the zenith of early youth has passed, along with its certainties. However, in "Credo", he nails his colours to the mast:
I believe in a moment where things come into themselves and everything before and otter is a kind of fading.
I believe, most days, in words (as I might in diamonds) but
I try them between my teeth be fore I buy them.
He also believes in Zen, the sudden inversion or juxtaposition of unlikely magic scenes. As a title of one poem puts it, the truth is far from obvious the created and creative universe is stranger and more mysterious than it first seems.
These poems explore a cosmos subtly different from the one revealed in his previous work. The author cites a line from Wallace Stevens: "Ignorance is one of the sources of poetry". So, too, is awareness and a keen sensibility.
Boran demonstrates that he possesses these two qualities.
SINEAD MORRISSEY was (is) a prodigy. By the time she was 18 she had won the Patrick Kavanagh Award (1990). Now, at the advanced age of 24, she has published a full collection of verse. And it is not just a question of being promising: she has already delivered something worth keeping.
There Was a Fire in Vancouver reminds me a little of the young Paul Durcan, as in Westport in the Light of Asia Minor. A little, also, of Ahkmatova. Good early, mentors. Here there is much quiet introspection, as might be expected, but it is transmuted into atmospheric lyric. The poems see the extraordinary in what passes (too often) for ordinary. There is also a recognisable spiritual dimension to these lines - the Welsh poet R.S. Thomas is an acknowledged influence. She writes: "Thomas inspires me because he is absolutely faithful to his own poetic concerns, regardless of a predominantly atheistic environment and changing literary fashions. He teaches that half the battle is knowing what not to listen to."
Ms Morrissey is worth listening to, when experience fuses emotion and intellect it should yield true ore.