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Derek Coyle has published poems in The Irish Times, Irish Pages, The Texas Literary Review, The Honest Ulsterman, Orbis, Skylight 47, Assaracus, The High Window and The Stony Thursday Book. He published his first collection, Reading John Ashbery in Costa Coffee Carlow in a dual-language edition in Tranas Sweden and Carlow Ireland in April 2019, and it was shortlisted for the Shine Strong 2020 poetry award. He lectures in Carlow College/St Patrick’s, Ireland. His second collection, Sipping Martinis under Mount Leinster is due in 2023.

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Introduction

‘After being raised on a sensibly robust and nourishing diet of grounded and tangible poetry for much of my adolescence and young manhood – Seamus Heaney, Patrick Kavanagh, and Derek Mahon in Ireland, and Akhmatova and Cavafy further afield – I took a strange turn towards the surreal and the fantastical in my maturity. Something…