The 501 quatrains of "Second Best Moments in Chinese History" make it seem at first like a repackaged version of Frank Kuppner's celebrated first collection "A Bad Day for the Sung Dynasty" (1984). But it isn't: "Please note that this is a completely...

In "That Stranger, The Blues", James Keery's first book of poems, there is an extraordinary fusion between a poetry of landscapes, indebted to Edward Thomas and Robert Frost, and the radical strategies of the poets of the New York and Cambridge schoo...

P. J. Kavanagh's poems are filled with praise, with the minute observations that transform a mood, or the dazzling recollection that can change the heart. "If description is revelation", wrote Derek Mahon in the Irish Times, "his revelatory gift is p...

Irish literature exists in two languages. A dual approach is necessary if the tradition, with its historical, political and semantic tensions, is to be understood-indeed, if some of its features are to be appreciated at all. Separate Gaelic and Anglo...

In "Mirrorwork", her second collection, Mimi Khalvati takes the Islamic art of mirror-mosaic – found in palaces, barber shops, kebab houses – as metaphor. The shorter poems refract one another, the three long sequences act as a mirror triptych, their...

Everything is always strange in the poetry of Frank Kuppner. His first Carcanet book was a single poem, "A Bad Day for the Sung Dynasty" (1984, Scottish Arts Council Book Award), running to 511 Oriental Quatrains, a kind of Procrustean Bed of Ware ac...

Sarah Kirsch was a leading East German poet before leaving in 1977 for West Germany, where her work was already highly regarded. While she had supported many of the political and social aims of the Communist government in the GDR, she had been active...

"If the recent German Zeitgeist could speak, it might sound a good deal like Michael Kruger", Richard Dove writes in his introduction to Diderot's "Cat", the first comprehensive selection of Kruger's poems in English. The poems are drawn from thirtee...

Two ambitious monologues form the core of Marius Kociejowski's first book: "Doctor Honoris Causa" and "Giacomo Leopardi in Naples". These and his shorter poems, including the sequence "The Wolf Month", reveal a poet with a fine lyrical and narrative...