Once a year on my way to Mayo I make a small detour to a small town – Shrule – because the poet of my youth Tom Duddy, came from there. I have never met him yet I have a respect and regard for the poetry he writes. So it is a delight for me to review his Arlen House collection – The Hiding Place, published this year.
Tom Duddy comes across as a quiet unassuming person, who lives in the periphery of things and makes important the small castaway, throwaway things that inform a life lived elsewhere.
