Peter Sirr’s first collection, Marginal Zones, was hailed by Eavan Boland in The Irish Times as ‘a distinguished, convincing debut by an evidently gifted poet’, while Thomas McCarthy enthused in Poetry Ireland Review, ‘Peter Sirr’s first book is a joy to read . . . (He) has a technical prowess of extraordinary maturity . . . spectacularly gifted . . .’ His second book, Talk, Talk, is even more mature and accomplished. Its poems are connected by biographical fact and by their focus on moments of doubt, the bizarre precariousness of everything – objects, emotions, lives.
One section traces the progress of a love affair, another attempts to come to terms with the poet’s father’s death. Part of the atmosphere of these poems derives from their setting in a foreign country, surrounded by a foreign language. In some, language itself is used as a metaphor. The poems in Talk, Talk have clearly answered an insistent demand. They draw on and support each other in playful, honest and diverse ways.
‘Peter Sirr has lost none of his mastery of the tension between surface and interior life and his work is still suffused with probing incredulity at the strangeness and impermanence of the world . . . Sirr’s maturity continually strikes and his artistry grows apace . . . he strides forward to become, I am sure, one of our outstanding poets.’ — Tom Clyde, Fortnight
