NEW HOPE INTERNATIONAL REVIEW

If ever one sought a concrete example of the poetry written into geography, the city of Derry is it. History is literally daubed onto its walls. A walking tour takes you past a mural to the fourteen young men murdered on Bloody Sunday, ringed with oak leaves that recall the city's name. Another, a dark rendering of a child in a gas mask, commemorates the 1969 Battle of Bogside. Curbs are painted red, white and blue to recall the Union Jack, or green, white and orange for the Tricolour. The Friendship monument depicts two figures reaching across the divide , not quite clasping hands.

Stephen Brown's pamphlet bears the image of one corner of the Derry City Walls. These recall the Siege of Derry, one of the defining moments of Irish history, and the resounding cry of No surrender! Walking them, it's hard to miss the British army surveillance tower with a bird's-eye view of the Catholic district below.

The poems inside are freshly squeezed straight from the landscape. We are taken down Bligh's Lane, once site of the British Army base, where 'they' might just as easily mean aliens nowadays. A flaneur, passing through Ferryquay Gate (where the siege of Derry began) is today unsure

	…whether he was extra-
	or intra-mural, whether
	he was in a free or unfree state…

	…read our history in the mortar lines
	between the red bricks, in the blasted
	empty spaces, in unpronounceable signs.

The influence of Paul Muldoon, master of the Northern aporia, is clear. The hares that

	…take their little lives in their hands,
	Back and forth across the Glenshane at dawn.

Full of dark pishoguery and fires-in-the head, this is a thoroughly excellent short collection. It is available from White Leaf Press for the disgracefully paltry sum of £3 and I suggest, with all the force that this serif-starved font can convey, that you buy, beg or borrow