Peggy O'Brien's first collection Sudden Thaw opens with a taut sonnet sequence that laments her father, and closes with an intrepid examination of what she calls "the gauze of mother-daughter / Love, that knit of wills."

Between these impressive and affecting suites she treats us to a many-angled account of her discovery of herself as an artist. There's anger and agitation, sorrow and grievance in these poems, but also an erotic tinge, humour and delight.

Although she writes from her nerve-ends, O'Brien never takes her eye off the evolving shape of her poems.