The Water Stealer : An evocative, affectionate and intelligent body of work

The Faber-published slim volume of poetry continues to carry with it a solemn sense of arrival. Maurice Riordan’s new collection, with its slate-grey cover and clean elegant lettering, more than lives up to the promise of the packaging, consisting as it does of an evocative, affectionate and intelligent body of work.

First let’s light up and inhale with a smile of satisfaction the poem that is Sweet Afton. Smokers from back in the day may remember the yellow and amber colours of the packet which carried the words of Robert Burns: “Flow gently, Sweet Afton, amang thy green braes/ Flow gently, I’ll sing thee a song in thy praise.”