The Pot of Earth and the Iron Pot by Ruth McIlroy F Starik Monsoon Diary strikes an often

Monsoon Diary strikes an often elegiac tone

and through the complex labyrinths of the modern age

Othello's intertwined identities as 'immigrant' and 'Black'

to the very hairs of your head

The Pot of Earth and the Iron Pot by Ruth McIlroy F Starik Monsoon Diary strikes an oftenI was happy being machine when round the bend beside a stream was birdsong happening in the trees. Ruth McIlroy is a poet of the tilting world. Her lyrics are charged with immediacy and proceed off kilter in the revelation of familiar experience as unfamiliar and normality as something quite other. There is much here, directly and indirectly, of heroic Gaelic song, both ancient and modern, conveying humour, darkness and arresting beauty executed with