Dear Sydney
- When I opened your letter I just started in on the verse - as a dip, to get a taste. Well I was mesmerised.
I read through to the end. Wonderful frenze (sic) of spot-on rhymes and sword-daring sort of eloquence - or rapier and cutlass in action demonstration. Intensely enjoyable, I [...]
Pre-eminently human… funny in the way that The Catcher in the Rye was funny. BOOKS IRELAND
Mr Davison has a gentle touch with words that allow them to filter through the mind, leaving a residue of warmth and familiar recognition behind. SUNDAY PRESS
It has a hero who smacks of early Beckett EVENING HERALD
It is obvious that [...]
“A master of form” – Brendan Kennelly
“100% improvement on Christina Rossetti” Geoffrey Thurley
“Her voice is one of heart-breaking beauty” - Roz Cowman
“Originality, commitment, and real literary ability” Eilean Ni Chuilleanain
“I like the poems..I keep hearing something in them that I’m always listening for..and rarely catch” - Ted Hughes
“Her range of vocabulary and phrasing is impressive [...]
Through it I discovered Ciaran O’Driscoll from Limerick, and his collection Gog and Magog from which I bring you the following two. I love the way the first poem has me enter the park as the protagonist did, climbing over the wall ungracefully, and how we don’t see the poplar until after the fact, when [...]
This is a passionate, erotic, mature novel that displays many of the virtues which contemporary Irish fiction so conspicuously lacks: an intelligent vision of an adult relationship coupled with an intelligent vision of contemporary Irish society. Plus, he has a supple prose style which is a constant joy to read.
- Ronan Sheehan, The Irish Press, [...]
A Song for Joanna is so successfully lodged in the particularities of Australia – its vibrancy, variety, expanse of sky and land, its mixed cultures and Aboriginal origins – that, returning from a trip to Ireland and filled with longing for it, I fell back in love with my own country. And through it all, [...]