Spring 2008

Editorial by Maurice Riordan, Poetry Editor
A physicist recently complained to me that poetry doesn’t deal with science the way it deals with war:

Poems

Eamon Grennan
Dove of Desire

Eamon Grennan
Ready

Kathryn Maris
It Was a Gift from God

Kathryn Maris
The Devil Got into Her

MIchael Murphy
The Man Who Walked on Water

MIchael Murphy
from The Book of Mormon • A Silk Purse

Bill Manhire
Song with a Chorus • Velvet • The Carpe Diem Poem

John Hartley Williams
Jazz Recipe • Port • Hard Men

Ellen Cranitch
Spring

Dawn Wood
Man and Atoms

Rhian Gallagher
Waltz • Boys at the Wheel Park

Tim Liardet
Sky Egg • The Law of Primogeniture • The Constables Call

Marianne Burton
The Postcard on the Fridge • After the Pipe

Alison Brackenbury
Lapwings

Andrew Sant
Interrogative Pressure

Gerard Smyth
To the Wedding

John Kinsella
First Counter-clockwise Canto of the Möbius Strip

Marie Etienne
from War Diary

Tony Roberts
The Noir américain Back at Birdland

Adam Wyeth
Life is Shit

Gregory Leadbetter
Sparrows • The Sight of Closed Eyes

Samantha Wynne-Rhydderch
The Glass Path

Julian Stannard
Oh, Fuck It • My Beautiful Son Cooks Me an Octopus

Vona Groarke
By and By • The Jar

Catherine Smith
Nectar

Fred D’Aguiar
Playing House • S-Joe

Reviews & Features

Elegiac anti-Fascist anger right now
George Szirtes says The Drowned Book has water and enough to spare, but Mary Oliver needs a good glug

Innocence when roses smelt divine; and Brechtian hard common sense
Carol Rumens’ close reading of two remarkable new collections

A unique and warmly recommended anthology
DM Black enjoys reading the responses of contemporary poets to poems of the past

Senior poets and a contrasting younger author
Grevel Lindop compares work by Peter Porter, Michael Hamburger and Diana Syder

Realigning the World
Helen Constantine’s admiration for three very different collections

Enthusiasm for two first collections
Bernard O’Donoghue says one is the best first book in years, and the other is uncompromisingly inventive