NEW HOPE INTERNATIONAL REVIEW

Behind Pat Langan's apocalyptic cover photograph showing Halley's Comet over Dublin is the best collection of poetry it has been my pleasure to review in 2007.

Many of the poems in Gerard Smyth's sixth collection have appeared in top flight publications such as Best of Irish Poetry 2007, Poetry Review, The Irish Times, Poetry Salzburg Review, Wingspan: a Dedalus Sampler and some have been heard on the Radio 1 programme SUNDAY MISCELLANY IN IRELAND.

This 75-page collection is divided into 4 sections. The first poem in each part gives more than a hint of the quality in store. They are RIDDLES AND ORISONS, SURVIVORS, COOL OF THE DAY and ANOTHER EVENING IN THE WEST.

The first of this quartet sets the scene admirably. It is dedicated to the memory of Jack Hoey, teacher:

	Straight-backed, arms outflung.
	In front of everyone
	he stood like a singer about to sing
	his favourite aria.
	The dust of school-chalk
	lay on his shoulders.

	He read with both eyes closed
	brooded over Matthew Arnold 
	and Samuel Coleridge 

	...

	he created the atmosphere of the Lakes
	just by saying Windermere.

In the poem fronting-up the second part of the collection we meet Smyth's SURVIVORS:

	My father knew them, the menders
	of broken shoes, the brotherhood
	of men with joiner's tools and the sailors
	home from sea, who rose at noon.

	...

	the newsboys of Inchicore and Kilmainham
	whose evening mantra announced
	the final score, the fall of nations.

However the opening poem is COOL OF THE DAY and I'd like to quote from that, if only to endow some logic and system to this report. COOL OF THE DAY begins quietly enough but like a Tennessee Williams play soon grows uncomfortably unsettling:

	It was an evening for the mowing of lawns,
	the clipping of hedgerows. 
	Not staying indoors
	with the soap opera, the idiots' quiz
	or watching CNN
	for news .

	...

	sipping a Burgundy
	that was close to a menstrual colour
	enjoying the best weather in weeks,
	the indolent heat of an Indian summer.

	There is discourse, banter, the lingua

	franca of men with five o'clock shadows,
	whiskey breaths and peaked caps
	sideways on their heads.

There are hauntingly crafted pieces such as FAIRGROUND ATTRACTIONS and ... I'm betting that this excellent volume will make it on to a number of poetry award shortlists for works published in 2007 and I'd be quite surprised if some kind of Poetic-Oscarette, doesn't find it's way to Gerard Smyth's sideboard.

To sum up: the amazing and impressive thing for me is the sheer sustainability of it all; how the poet sustains the quality and imagery of the poems, poem after poem, something that some household names, even in Ireland, have visibly struggled to do of late.