Keeping Company - Tapa blanda

Often the poems come to us over the distances, bringing a leaf from the great beech at Coole or a small bronze horse from Orvieto, but Ruark's individual voice, as always, is rooted in local allegiances. As the Irish poet Patrick Kavanagh said, home is the only real flower, but is always the home-lover who wanders. In the cities and hill towns of Italy, climbing Knocknarea new Sligo, alone or in sustaining company, Ruark travels in these poems through landscapes and among faces insistent with correspondences, reminding us that by naming what we move through with close and passionate attention, we may all now and again feel at home in our wandering.