Extract from Estudios Irlandeses review of Derek Mahon’s New Collected Poems.
. . . what is remarkable is not simply the quantity of Mahon’s new poetry, but, more importantly, the signal quality of much of this later effusion . . . in these more recent works there has been a qualitative change in the nature of [his] ecological vision . . . there are intimations that this later Mahon is confronting environmental history from a more ‘green’ political standpoint. In a sense, the poetic voice frequently assumes the tones of ecological advocate for the assailed natural world; forcing a reckoning or, at least reflection, on the past, present and future of all ‘life on earth’.
. . . the sequence, ‘Homage to Gaia’ . . . is one of the most explicit examples of the coincidence of ecoconsciousness and poetry in contemporary Irish writing.
New Collected Poems is a substantial volume, a testament to a singular voice in modern Irish poetry. Mahon is a poet of conscience, of irony, of the local and the cosmopolitan, and is a writer characterised by an exemplary humanism, as well as an advanced ecological vision.
— Eóin Flannery, Estudios Irlandeses Issue 7
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