Peter Riley: ‘What was surprising was not so much that Tony Connor was still writing poems, having given the impression that he stopped about 15 years ago, but that the poems are modern.’

Peter Riley: ‘Peter Dent has written and published a lot over the years (a list of 30 titles at the back), almost all of it in the form of prose poetry (which some denizens of creative writing classes seem to think is a thing of liberating revolutionary impact which they invented last week.)’

Peter Riley: ‘Stadnicka is not devoted to difficulty for its own sake but it is as if the movement of the verse is inevitably led into it by having to face realities which cannot be explained or recognised in any other way. While with some poets a highly wrought manner is evident from the first line, Stadnicka’s first lines tend to be problem-free while her last lines ask you to encounter a strong resonance, often connected to disasters such as car crashes.’

Peter Riley:’It’s heartening to recognise the honest craft of these encounters with people place and sheep. I’m not sure that the history is 100 percent right in the lurking polemic which emerges in the last piece. Or rather, all Irish problems as colonial problems might be only 90 percent, right?”

Peter Riley:’While there was some constancy in the apocalyptic script over all this period and from all sorts of poets, it is clear that there was a peak episode when the “Thomas crater”, as Keery calls it, not only invigorated a lot of “standard” ventures into the maelstrom, but also set in motion through direct influence a stronger and more fiery succession. Membership of New Apocalypse was not relevant; it mainly set up an easy target for its enemies to focus on, and some of the mildest adherents were involved in it as well as some of the extremists.’