"Every now and then I hit a collection that I want to write about for hours to salute the way simplicity and complexity melds a satisfying poetry brew for ear and mind. This is one of them. Paula Green "[Kevin Ireland and Peter Bland] have lived through a lot of the flurry and scuffle of modernisms and post-modernisms, not entirely unconscious or unaffected, probably formally less constrained and more inventive than would have been the case if those movements had not occurred, but not too fussed by fashion either; concerned most of all to mean something, to make good sense, to write well, feel deeply and be understood. C K Stead, NZ Poet Laureate Here in his 22nd collection of poems, Kevin Ireland is as deft and wise as ever: The perfect loving phrase the one that tongues a dazzling parting thought and leaves a vapour trail across the heart does not force its truths from gravities (or likelihoods from similarities) but weaves an arc of steamy sparkly hold-on-tights-for-godsakes and from nothing more than golden-mackled loops of heady harmonies.
