Few
first collections receive the critical praise accorded to Conor
O'Callaghan's The History of Rain.
Seatown, its remarkable successor, centres around a cluster
of poems which draws upon the oldest section of the poet's home
town, Dundalk. They offer at once an unblinkered view of the everyday
reality of that place and an unqualified hymn to its rundown charms.
But Seatown also becomes a place of the mind and a vantage point
from which to meditate on his family's seafaring history. Other
poems range from the tongue-in-cheek polemics of 'East' to the
more expansive lyricism of 'Slip'. Whether obliquely narrative,
formally innovative or sensually explicit, Seatown more
than justifies that early praise.
