The Desert Route, Harry Clifton's selected poems 1973-1988, describes an 'arc of odyssey' from Ireland to Berlin, West Africa, the Far East and back to Dublin.

The points of intense historical life which it records amount as well to a passage from innocence to experience.

As Derek Mahon observes in his introduction, 'There must be three things in combination before the poetry can happen: soul, song and formal necessity. Clifton has all three; he has chosen well from his four individual volumes. The Desert Route will place him among the poets who matter.'