Waiting for the Beasts - Una Crowe PRICE: IRP£5.99

The sensibility behind these poems is deeply feminine, the voice by turns tender, daring, adventurous and unafraid of and directness: "Birds vesper / to their nests / villages light / the distance / like liners / on the horizon." In such striking lyrical images Una Crowe's poems can slip easily from the part localised to the universal and cosmic. There is a soul-trail here that can reach across cultures to encompass the ancient and the immediate, recognising convergence and encounter - "another theology / under the cloak / at the margins." While there is a strong sense of inner and outer search and pilgrimage in Una Crowe's work, there are no pre-imposed ideological fences defining the landscape. The feet find their own encounters and epiphanies light up their own way.