Mary O'Malley's ninth collection moves between two landscapes, that of the West of Ireland and the East coast of America. The first section opens with an elegy for a poet and moves through the familiar geography of a house and its hinterland, and ends with a celebration of the redemptive power of music, one of two motifs that run through the book. The second section examines what happens when the poet finds herself ' Nel mezzo del camin' in a changed landscape that takes on the aspect of fairytale and allegory. Among the poems in ' Playing The Octopus' are several meditations on trees....