Shoulder Tap

Shoulder Tap | By Maurice Riordan

Throughout these poems, with their roaming sense of first-person, the speakers' minds are cavernous and echoic, primal and sophisticated, observant and raw, in and out of control of themselves. The effect is unpredictable and thrilling, at once a dark art and an illumination of unease and loss and wishfulness. The collection features disquieting songs of a mutable self alongside poignant elegies, interior journeys and subtle (and not so subtle) ripostes to the legacy of Trumpism - while elsewhere encounters with ghostly feet and tongues of fire consort with riffs on Baudelaire, Rilke and Laforgue.

These poems twinkle with mischief and humour, making for a pungent and haunting read. Riordan - a poet whose strong, rippling influence is felt by all in his wake - affirms his reputation at the forefront of contemporary poetry.