In this collection of poems you will find explorations of the magic of childhood, of family history and of difficult personal times that are always interlaced with humour. The writer travels in time and place over seventy years, from (in those days) the primitive and secluded Glen of Aherlow to the shocking but exciting 1960's London, the cosmopolitan bustle of Boston and New York and the student riots of 1968 in Paris. Marriage to a French chef, the birth of two children, divorce, a move back to Ireland - this is a book about an ordinary life lived in extraordinary circumstances. I have known and admired the poetry of Dympna Dreyer for a very long time now. This collection of new and selected poems is both a wonderful new development and an important record of earlier work. I love the humour and the emotion so often to be found in Dympna's poems: she writes with a twinkle in a wary eye. The poems collected here comprise a narrative arc: they run from childhood through adolescence into adulthood and the beginnings of old age.They are the fruit of a long life, well lived - they are a life's work. Mark Roper
