Mary Turley-McGrath
Other Routes
ISBN: 9781851321148
One of the pleasures offered by Other Routes lies in the fact that the other routes the poems bring to such vivid life do not have an end in sight. These are poems about the magic and mystery of destination and destiny; of meetings and missings; of what might have happened. They range widely through time and space, discovering that “Drowned amphorae from the seabed prove/ nothing is ever completely lost.” The poems are keyed to the music and chaos of interconnection and inconclusion which they face with courage and humility: “Do not try to understand,/ do not fear, it is far/ beyond your realm.”
– Mark Roper
The poems in Forget the Lake (Arlen House, 2013) reflect a vivid sense of place, what Seamus Heaney has referred to as “an imaginative nest”, a beloved place that becomes a ground for the voice … There is wonder in the everyday drama of weather, of waking to a mountain wrapped in mist, or a flooded field … [The poems] convey a love of language, of the sounds of words in the mouth … The imagery is startling, often sensual.
– Catherine Phil MacCarthy, Poetry Ireland Review