My Lord Buddha of Carraig Éanna

Commencing in Norwich Cathedral where "organ-pipes, sunstruck by the last rays / Through the high cathedral windows, beamed / Beyond sin or sanctity", the poems in Paddy Bushe's new collection explore questions of identity and self-knowledge, particularly in the light of time spent in places such as the abandoned monastic settlement of Skellig Michael, or the mountains of Nepal. The coming together of here and there, of East and West, is alluded to in the title poem, centred around a plastercast of the Buddha in the poet's garden "Rooted in all this betwixt and between!" The fourth section is made up of poems that deal with mortality, fragility, the threat of loss and "utter absence", as well as poems of joy and transcendence. The book closes with The Howl for Art Ó Laoghaire, the poet's translation of the great eighteenth-century Gaelic poem, Caoineadh Airt Uí Laoghaire.