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Description
In the opening Lighthouses section of this volume the west coast of Ireland is recast as a kind of Burroughsian Land of the Dead, with the ghost-lights from defunct lighthouses mixing with those of the automated in a sequence that slowly allows itself to be decoded.
Ned Kelly, given his own requiem, is found morphing in and out of a lupine-self following the destruction of the last wolf in Ireland and a period which saw the mass-banishment of many of the country's underclasses to the new British antipodean colonies.
Other poems are suggestive of a bestiary, presenting various animals that have been damaged and reformed by their current environment.
A number of contemporary Irish artists are used as a sounding board, the poems following them, Alice-like, down their various rabbit-holes. Thrown into all of this mix are cameos from Harpo Marx and Mr. Punch, as well as opera-singing Alsatians.
