“Moscow provides the subject matter for Moore’s second collection, Lost Republics. The social aftermath of the Soviet era is the collection’s thematic undercurrent and it is captured with pathos and lyrical detachment. A political undercurrent is always simmering, and when it is aligned with longing, Moore enacts a kind of magic: “remember to melt down your ring for me;/ let all our promises be one last bullet” (Zapad). An accomplished and intriguing book.”

Paul Perry, The Irish Times

“This superb second collection finds Moore’s distinctive voice, established in 2004’s Black State Cars, resonating with a new clarity and confidence. Influenced by the neo-modernist tendency but not necessarily of it, Moore avoids the languid, lyrical tonalities striven for by the majority of his contemporaries. Many of the most powerful things here are oddly cinematic in nature. ‘Alphaville’ pans from the backrooms of Moscow billiard bars “out across the ring road past the metro line”, to Olympic Gardens that are filled with the human and non-human detritus. The beautiful poem ‘Snow Trucks’ generates a more serene cinematic effect, as it lovingly depicts a cityscape “heavy with powder. They are poems that demand to be lived with.”

Billy Ramsell, The Stinging Fly

‘Lost Republics will cement Moore’s reputation as one of the better recently emerging Irish poets, one whose voice is distinctive, contemplative and able to draw on and create from the tradition of Mandlestam and Akhmatova, whose stylistic echoes can be seen in many of the poems, as well as the tradition of Austin Clarke and Derek Mahon whose influence I also detect.’

Nigel McLoughlin, Iota

Steppe

I left her waiting in international radio waves.
A voice drifting between western Siberia and Peking.
Minus nine but spring will come;
you will ditch your great coat and famous automatic
for music and dip a toe in the water again.
Someone’s secret code has been broken on the wall
between the mountains and the palace.
Tiny taps of a finger shocked into motion
like the hooves of horses tracking back along the steppe.
I left the compound radiator sleeping
and dragged through shadows of birds and dogs.
Above the wind the incomprehensible speech of satellites:
it is no-one’s fault if we do not make our way home.
The mountain goats and bears leave footprints on Ararat
and disappear – sailors climb over oceans
revamped by electricity.

 

 

Lost Republics can be ordered from Salmon Poetry, Amazon or local bookstores.