Shearsman Books

Paperback, 161pp, 9x6ins, £9.95 / $17
ISBN 9780907562597

This volume represents a full-scale career retrospective for an Irish poet, who remains too little-known in Britain. He is the author of six previous collections, only one of which appeared in the UK. Born in Dublin in 1942, he founded the seminal New Writers' Press and co-founded the magazine The Lace Curtain with Trevor Joyce. Although best-known for his translations from the Spanish, his own work should be recognised for its own special qualities.

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"Several of the grief poems which freight the second half of The Purpose of the Gift are dated and located in southern Spain in 1995. Among these is one of two remarkable contemplations of St John of the Cross, 'Brightness'. In the other, 'On Reading San Juan de la Cruz', 'Darkness is necessary . . . / The ray of darkness/ precedes the bright light . . . / The empty white page/ without perplexity/ absent of desire/ Perfection'. But Smith's poems, too, are achieved resolutions. If this is, after all, 'the purpose of the gift', these two books fulfil it with clarity, immaculate technical control – and great beauty." (Fiona Sampson, The Irish Times)

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