‘There were some compelling new volumes: John Burnside’s Black Cat Bone and Justin Quinn’s Close Quarters are different in style and subject and gravity, but they are both unmistakable works of a master.’
— Bernard O’Donoghue, TLS.
‘The best book of new poetry this year was Justin Quinn’s Close Quarters, a collection which has creative places of its own to describe. The book spans Ireland and the Dublin suburbs (where Quinn grew up) and Prague and the Czech Republic (where he and his family live), to compelling and sometimes unsettling effect. Quinn is one of the few contemporary poets whose command of cadence and rhyme issues in forms that go beyond mechanical formalism; the result is memorable poetry of sustained lyrical power.’
— Peter McDonald, TLS.
Fintan O’Toole would ‘like to receive Derek Mahon’s New Collected Poems (Gallery £17.95). Mahon’s combinations of savage indignation and ludic delight, of high formality and apparent ease, repay endless revisiting.’
John McAuliffe’s Of All Places was one of the most mentioned books in The Irish Times Books of the Year:
Colm Tóibín . . . John McAuliffe’s Of All Places displays an ability to write public poems about Ireland using tones filled with keen wit, and using cadences, forms and rhythms that have a timeless beauty and grace.
David Wheatley . . . showed a fine cosmopolitan wit.
Elizabeth Wassell . . . passion and playfulness.
