As a boy he survived pogroms in Kiev. from ‘Heart Surgery’ In Frank McGuinness’s sixth collection imagination and recollection combine to register historical and political moments (‘Burnfoot’, ‘The Battle of Clontibret’, and ‘The Protestant Boys’), a son haunted by his father and the author’s marriage in the Cardiac Unit of a Belfast hospital.

Poems prompted by Bruegel the Elder and Géricault join versions of Lorca and Villon. Infused with an Oriental sensibility the book embraces far-flung places — Machu Picchu, the Ho Chi Minh Trail and the bus to Fatima. The Wedding Breakfast, Frank McGuinness’s finest collection, concludes with a stunning elegy (‘Who Could Survive the Atlantic Ocean?’) for Danny Sheehy.