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Your list has always been interesting, idiosyncratic, imaginative and your translations [...] have been a source of pleasure to me.
Al Alvarez

Review of Torchlight- David Isaac, The PBS Bulletin, April 2011

There is more than a hint of looking back in this assured collection; personal recollections from growing up in Northern Ireland sit easily alongside a middle section of poems depicting the gods and heroes of ancient Greece, including a new translation of one of the Homeric hymns; Hymn to Demeter. Seminal moments from McDonald's past are vividley captured (e.g. learning to drive, taking a first photograph) but the poems reach beyond a mere retelling to reveal more reflective thoughts about change, time passing and the human condition. The poem Singles is a wonderful paen to vinyl which will strike a chord with music lovers of a certai age.
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