'The Whole & Rain-domed Universe' is Colette Bryce's much-anticiapted follow-up to 'Self-Portrait in the Dark.' The book presents the reader with an extraordinarily clear-eyed, vivid and sometimes disturbing account of growing up in Derry during the Troubles, with many ghosts both raised and laid to rest.

The dark attunes our eyes to detail the light can sometimes conceal; similarly, Colette Bryce's new poems are 'slant tellings' that reveal strange and true reflections. Using a wide range of imaginative strategies, Bryce examines the ways in which time is held, space enclosed - and a life framed and given meaning: a face in a broken mirror, a spider trapped under a glass, or a stolen kiss in a car-wash. Bryce's two previous prize-winning collections were widely admired for their marvellously seductive music and their speed of thought; Self-Portrait in the Dark widens and deepens the poet's...