Flip Sides

The poems in Michael Durack’s Flip Sides are set, for the most part, in Ireland’s rural Mid-West with occasional ventures, physically or imaginatively, to Dublin, London, Wales, Amsterdam and the United States. Childhood memories, rural traditions, vanished landscapes, love and loss, sport and music all the familiar themes from his previous collection, Where It Began – reappear, and the mundane and the surreal lie cheek by jowl. Poems are “interrogated”, Sean Bean morphs into the Shan Van Vocht of Irish folk-lore, a suburban rail commuter experiences Groundhog Day and the Rosary is interrupted by the Great Train Robbery. Flip Sides could be compared to a juke box which, as often as not, plays the B-Sides of the 45 rpm singles, providing the reader with a series of unexpected treats.