Those April Fevers

Mary O'Donnell's has always been one of the fierce voices of poetry: in all her themes, whether intimate, public, reflective or mythic, there is a common fearlessness of vision coupled with profound and sometimes unexpected and humane understanding. O'Donnell articulates a mature, vital, angry, political consciousness entirely fitting as the nation reaches the centenary of its most disruptive and revolutionary moment. What an imagination this is for our day.

Technically adventurous and emotionally powerful, Mary O'Donnell's beautiful new work is simply perfect and breath-taking. The meditative atmosphere of 'The world is mine' finds a true counter-balance in her acute social sense, thus the consoling world of nature, seasons and travel, are but a backdrop to O'Donnell's complex sense of human politics. This will be one of my books of the year.

Mary O'Donnell's new poems sparkle like frost — the language is sharp, the images exact and surprising. She is concerned with experience, with what endures in relationships, art and nature; courageous in exploring threats — climate change, violence and misogyny. Her responses to the latter are fresh and subversive rather than doom-laden and stock angry. This is a collection to treasure like the amber she seeks in the opening poem.