Shoulder Tap

Maurice Riordan’s keenly anticipated new collection continues his agile exploration of time, both in its depredations and rewards, while also bringing a sceptical, enquiring intelligence to bear on the anxieties and vanities of our age. Here we have disquieting songs of a mutable self; a projected online deathbed confession; the soul haranguing the body; while encounters with ghostly feet and tongues of fire consort with riffs on Baudelaire, Rilke and Old English. These poems pulse with mischief and macabre humor, making for a pungent and haunting read. With this book, Riordan – a poet whose subtle, rippling influence is felt by all in his wake – affirms the ’s assessment of (2013) as "strong, wise and enduring".