POETRY:REFLECTING A WIDE CULTURAL and linguistic range, these three very different collections offer poetic embodiments of a variety of voices. Welsh, American and Irish expressions colour many of the poems, introducing the readers to a diversity that is increasingly represented in contemporary Irish poetry.

Welsh-born Nerys Williams's Sound Archive(Seren, 64pp, £8.99) is an aptly titled debut collection. The reader can hear an array of voices, from historical figures to family members, throughout the 33 poems. We encounter interesting narratives, biographies and stories, like that of a dead shopkeeper whose ledger carries the story of an unseen life:

Here is biography in a wooden chest

move it to a lit place for words.

However, through a commanding first-person narration the most powerful element of these poems is their playful representation of sensory experience. The poet seems to contemplate the idea of archiving memory, and question whether words are the best, or only, means of recovering what is lost. The Dancing House, for example, evokes movement and says, "I came here to slow dance with history", finding memory within the spiritual dynamism of a historical building. The relationship between language, meaning and truth occupies many of these works. Pictorial, cinematic or kinetic representations find their way into poetic expression, stretching the work towards both philosophy and performance. Williams challenges her readers to be open to her work both intellectually and emotionally. She says "my words are ribbons in a box, / mismatched buttons in a bag" or, elsewhere, "I am description refusing to unscroll". Sound Archiveis an innovative volume that invites the reader to go on a journey of discovery. Those who are willing will be rewarded with an opulently intertextual and simultaneously sensual experience.

Drucilla Wall's The Geese at the Gates(Salmon, 81pp, €12) is a collection that tells stories from two continents and a variety of cultural backgrounds. The majority of the poems are situated in the US, where the poet lives, and they sensitively combine Native American and Irish cultural imagery with scenes of contemporary American living. Wall has a keen eye for detail and a sharp poetic awareness: there are many examples of moving personal memories, small heroisms and poignant poems about death. Mrs Dunbar Sends for Milk, for example, touchingly describes how two young boys go to great lengths to fetch milk for their grandmother's last cup of tea. However, the poet's environmental consciousness produces much of the most beautiful work in the book. American and Irish landscapes and animals take centre stage in many of the poems that contemplate issues of identity and ecology. Disappearance Songmentions "the silence of honeybees, / the absence of wings" while Dirty Hands at the Gateway to the Westdescribes a spiritualised encounter with the polluted Mississippi river, where the speaker touches the water in doubt:

Could it be dioxins caressed

the palms? Sparkling juices

from submerged cars and corpses?

Or was I baptized at the threshold,

the gateway to the West?

This is an exciting new collection by a poet whose storytelling and poetic vision create a keen anticipation for her future volumes.

Although Alan Jude Moore gives the name of a European city as a title for his collection, Strasbourg(Salmon, 75pp, €12) conveys ideas of transit and the in-between. "We cannot locate outside of ourselves," he says in Navigation, and indeed many of the poems express a sense of dislocation in cultural, historical and personal terms. Moore attempts to piece together a poetic identity by juxtaposing disjointed sentences which occasionally result in innovative structures, but often leave the reader with a sense of disappointment. The words drift on the page, often travelling at speed but without an apparent destination. There are snapshots of transient moments, however, which are used to great effect. The title poem, for example, imaginatively mentions how "we travel out of years / towards isolated shapes / suspended from the ceiling", while The Mirror, one of the strongest poems in the collection, deftly describes how

the sweat from our brows drops into the ocean

becomes part of everything

until the shadows of our bodies pass each other

like pearls of steam on a mirror.

Borbála Faragó is the editor, with Eva Bourke, of Landing Places: Immigrant Poets in Ireland