No Return Game

Tom Mathews has long been admired for his trademark wit and humour, for the combination of irreverence and formal inventiveness that has long since made him one of Ireland's most celebrated cartoonists. His debut collection of poems in 2009 showed him to be, in addition, a singular, inimitable presence in Irish poetry. Taking its title from Beckett's 'Murphy', his follow-up, 'No Return Game', is at once an extension of his' considerable reach into (one might say infiltration of) Irish and particularly European art and literature, as it is also a deepening, and by times a darkening, of Matthews' own vision, the big questions of time and love, ageing and loss, faced (and sometimes faced down) but always present, the poet's evident love for language and life his constant companions and guiding stars.