Naming of the Bones
John F. Deane
(Carcanet, £12.99)
Tablet bookshop price £11.69 • tel 020 7799 4064
C+nto & Othered Poems
Joelle Taylor
(Westbourne Press, £10.99)
Tablet bookshop price £9.89 • tel 020 7799 4064
Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard
Thomas Gray
(Bodleian Library, £16.99)
Tablet bookshop price £15.29 • tel 020 7799 4064
Poetry can be companionable, soothing and uplifting. It can also be challenging, rebarbative and unnerving. It all depends upon the angle of attack. In Naming of the Bones, the Irish poet John F. Deane is dredging through a long life of faith, interrogating himself, interrogating the faith of Ireland and its priests, interrogating, and holding up for our applause, the enduring wonders of nature. It is a long, grave, sober, deep-grounding book, as elegant and eloquent as it is fragile. It also feels very permeable too, half here, and half out of – or beyond – here in its seeing and its foreseeing.