4.50
Literally, Imbolg signifies ‘in the belly,’ and is the Celtic festival of Spring. The eponymous poem begins Part I with a defiant birth from a womb of mirrors, leading to poems of change, with its shadows and highs. Parts 2 and 3 comprise three quirky narratives and three long exploratory poems, including the prize-winning ‘Easter 2016.’ Part 4 is a Lockdown Diary of fifty poems, written between March 12 and April 30, 2020.
Time plays a huge part in its many forms – expanding, contracting, disappearing. There is constant movement, especially in ‘the second of April’ and ‘Lockdown Diary’ – where the speaker moves like a revenant past silent houses and closed commercial buildings. Sensual pleasure is also very much in the frame, and a pervasive element of irony and play.
. . . one aspect that is compelling about the book is its attempt to reimagine the personal lyric. The ‘she’ in ‘Before,’ for instance, is not a proxy for the author, and yet neither is she an impersonation or a character in a drama; this is not a poetry of self-revelation . . . The book’s strange vitality derives from the attentiveness of the poet to the shifting nature of experience.
– Richard Hayes, Poetry Ireland Review 134
