Opia, Alan Moore’s first collection of poems, introduces a virtuoso poet capable of an unusual range of forms, tones and images. Central to the book is a sequence of sonnets which unfolds the drama of a doomed love affair, with France and Ireland as its backdrop. Elsewhere, Alan Moore adopts a series of masks and voices, from the comic to the serious, and engages in a dazzling succession of scene-changes. Opia is a first book of exceptional energy and inventiveness; it is one of the most assured debuts in recent Irish poetry.