In the final poem of his new collection, Eamon Grennan describes his own poetry through a frank and self-perceptive metaphor. A sparrow-hawk swoops into a garden to take off an unsuspecting robin, "like a ripe fruit". The exactness, surprise and eerie majesty of the sparrow-hawk's strike is the kind of moment Grennan aspires to in his writing. Still Life with Waterfall is a series of such instances, in which Grennan hones his language until it hits its mark.
The sparrow-hawk isn't the only predator in the book. In 'Enough', a fox is glimpsed after its footprints have been seen, and at the end of the poem we realise that the predator is preyed on too, by the poet's own gaze. 'Aubade' is a poem similarly aware of its awkwardly human perspective on the natural world. Here an otter's "unwavering concentration" on its prey is rendered through a series of almost chemical reactions in its brain and senses. And this is typical of how Grennan's poetry goes to meet the world, rather than assuming that the world will come to meet him.
His poetry is bravely non-anthropomorphic in how it approaches the non-human and as a result, Grennan's poetic language becomes fascinatingly strained. He knows that his words can never be easily apt to describe a world essentially alienated from articulation, and he turns this into a virtue as his poems circle around their object, waiting for the right time to move in.
So his poems are often dramas of the smallest but most profound kind, where words are often lifted out of their context and forced into an unfamiliarity in which they are all the more resonant.
The word "asunder", for example, is given this treatment several times, and its implied rending of something that is at once physical and emotional captures exactly the forces Grennan is best able to describe.
Eamon Grennan is a relative rarity in contemporary Irish poetry. He doesn't belabour history, national or autobiographical. He is capable of tenderness towards his own memories, places and experiences, but is more interested in understanding the ineffable strangeness of what's outside himself.
His fascinating faith that the materiality and corporeality of the world hide mysteries eluding description allows the intensity of his thought and his words to find their focus in the instantaneous. Along with its compelling free lyricism, this makes Still Life with Waterfall a rewardingly cerebral and sensuously rich collection.
Colin Graham is Lecturer in Irish Writing at Queen's University Belfast. His book, Deconstructing Ireland, will be published next month