Readers of John Ennis's poetry will be familiar with his astonishing range, energy and ambition. Nowhere have these qualities been more conspicuous than in The Burren Days.

In this long poem — the book comprises one poem of more than 1,000 lines — he adapts one of Ireland's greatest love stories. Diarmuid becomes Ray Daly, a lab. technician, while Grainne remains her perennial self. Their relationship in Ireland today, with its emphasis on technology, imports, exports, profit and loss, is pitched against a vision of dream-Ireland, glimpsed in the memory of their excursions west on Ray's Super Yamaha.

John Ennis has uncovered and exploited the poetic potential of a 'new' language. He evokes two worlds, mythological and present day, and unites them in the Irish landscape and psyche. And by doing so, he asserts unchanging patterns in human nature.

The Burren Days is a tour de force, a genuine long poem continuing from a single impulse. Its novel note makes it a remarkable achievement in contemporary poetry.