All Things Depending

At a time when move fast and break things has been a vogue exhortation, Brendan Mulcahy's new collection All Things Depending proposes patience, compassion, irony and an appreciation of the interconnectedness of things. It favours honest doubt over a false, chain-saw-wielding certainty. Here are poems of the tennis court and the political arena, of family and travel, with a backdrop of global literature. The keynote sounded is contingency. The aligned swans on the cover photograph are there by happenstance. But there is abundant lightness of tone amongst the reflective moments. Section 2 opens with a cheeky citing of Keats' support in not taking things too seriously: Keats wasn't much of an activist, life being short and sad; but he always got the poems done, The Eve, the Urn and that.