Sir, – Your poetry reviewer John McAuliffe open his critique (Books, September 22nd) of the late Dermot Healy's Collected Poems with the observation that, "The poet-novelist is as rare a creature as the yeti". But is he?
A five-minute sleigh-ride through the frozen waste of what I laughingly refer to as my mind yielded the following far from abominable specimens: Swift, Stevenson, Scott, Johnson, Meredith, Hardy, Kipling, Masefield, Durrell, Lawrence, Graves, Larkin, Amis, Chesterton, Belloc and Bukowski. Closer to home I bagged Joyce, Beckett, Kavanagh, Stuart, Gogarty, Wilde, Behan, Bolger, Barry, Cronin, Kennelly, and James Stephens.
Others will doubtless occur to your lynx-eyed readers.
Googling is forbidden. Good hunting. – Yours, etc,
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TOM MATHEWS,
Shankill,
Dublin 18.