Eva Bourke + Tom French Irish Times

"Tom French has much to say but admirably it is often on behalf of others. These are poems without any pretensions, with a sturdiness to the diction and playful inclinations such as in the poem “Angler” in which a road-measuring exercise with a reel of tape is compared to the angler reeling in his catch. He mixes plain statement with imaginative and often startling leaps and U-turns that make the reader sit up." Gerard Smyth DRB "The narrative tone of a Tom French poem is immediately recognisable: detached but sympathetic; sensuously nostalgic; watchful; alert to the serendipities of time, place, and logos; acutely aware of the local with its twin taproots in history and landscape." Caitriona O'Reilly Irish Times