Shoulder Tap

(Hardback, Main)

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Description

Maurice Riordan's keenly anticipated new collection continues his agile exploration of time, both in its depredations and rewards, while also bringing a sceptical, enquiring intelligence to bear on the anxieties and vanities of our age. Here we have disquieting songs of a mutable self; a projected online deathbed confession; the soul haranguing the body; while encounters with ghostly feet and tongues of fire consort with riffs on Baudelaire, Rilke and Old English. These poems pulse with mischief and macabre humour, making for a pungent and haunting read.

With this book, Riordan - a poet whose subtle, rippling influence is felt by all in his wake - affirms the Guardian's assessment of The Water Stealer (2013) as 'strong, wise and enduring'.

Reviews

"Riordan is an exceptionally accomplished herdsman of words, corralling the unexpected into a single field and stoically soaring above his own doubts." -- Observer
PRAISE FOR THE WATER STEALER

The poetry in The Water Stealer storms, rattles and glitters on the pages, as Maurice Riordan channels the unmistakable natural energy he finds in the language of real people and things. -- PN Review

A thoughtful, enquiring poet and an impressive storyteller. -- Irish Times

Author Bio

Maurice Riordan was born in Co. Cork. His first book, A Word from the Loki (1995), was shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize, as was his most recent, The Water Stealer (2013). He is Emeritus Professor of Poetry at Sheffield Hallam, and a former editor of The Poetry Review (2013-17).